


More Than as a Friend

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Beechwood [1]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Characters from other episodes, Light Angst, Light BDSM, M/M, Masturbation, Peter in his bunny pajamas, Pining Mike, Sexual Tension, Slight Mike/Micky, Slow Burn, co-sleeping in a Monkee pile, sexual fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-26 05:02:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17135468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: When a pretty blonde makes it clear she’s really into Peter, Mike's overwhelming instinctive reaction is that it's all wrong and he has to put a stop to it—something which forces him to finally acknowledge his true feelings for his best friend...Huge thanks to the Sunshine Factory website https://monkees.coolcherrycream.com/ for all the fantastic info and pictures! I couldn't have written any of these fics without that lovely treasure trove to mine.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Elements of their rl personalities have seeped in.

The mattress dipped, rolling Mike over, but it wasn’t exactly that added weight on one side of the bed that woke him. He hadn’t been fully asleep, more like napping with one ear open, half-expecting this. It was too dark to see clearly, but he could use his other senses. “Mick, no.” He firmed his voice. “We’ve talked about this. Not when you’ve been drinking.”

“ _What?_ I drank about _that_ much,” came Micky’s soft, muted reply.

Mike squinted at him to see _that_ was Micky holding his finger and thumb about an inch apart. “At an end-of-shoot party?”

Micky scoffed. “Extras just get a thank-you send-off round of applause and a souvenir, if they’re lucky. The wrap party’s for the main cast and whatever slick chicks caught their eye. Where, okay, I might have been sneaked in and had one glass of wine.”

“And?”

“No, I’m okay. It was just…” He removed his knee from the mattress and it righted itself.

“Being back there.” Mike had expected something like that too. He shoved himself over to the wall and drew back the sheet. “Just get in and get to sleep.”

Micky’s face lit up and he threw himself in beside Mike.

“Good thing we’re both so skinny,” Mike muttered, rearranging himself to accommodate Micky in his far from large bed.

“What skinny? _Pshaw._ I’m lithe and you’re wiry.” Micky settled on his side, facing Mike.

“Did you even try to get to sleep?” Yep, it was official. He was the group’s mother hen. Well, that and nagging housewife. _Real groovy, Mike._

“No point. Knew I wouldn’t be able to, after that, there, meeting up with people I knew when I worked there, when Dad was there.”

“Yeah. Well, try and settle down, okay? I’m sorry it was upsetting,” Mike added, meaning it. “I don’t know why you went to do it.”

Micky’s shrug dipped the bed and rolled him a little closer to Mike. “Oh, it was a fun enough project. And you know, my turn to bring home the bacon.”

Well, true. Their group finance system mandated only one of them at a time worked a temporary job when funds so required it—which, yeah, was usually one of them after the other, nonstop, in turn. That way their focus was still on the band, with rehearsals fitted around the wage-earning Monkee’s hours, and none of them particularly liking ‘civilian’ jobs made them all work hard at looking for gigs and possibilities. Good enough system, Mike supposed. The temp jobs they took on couldn’t be at night, because of gigs, and Micky’s tended to be acting or background acting work, got through his former agent, or by relying on his network of contacts from his child-actor days and his late father’s circle.

Mike…kind of wished he wouldn’t, when some places or people reminded him too much of his dad. His passing hadn’t been that long ago and Micky of course still missed him. That he wanted to feel close to him, and his world, Mike understood. He wondered sometimes if Micky wanted to return to acting, having started college mainly to please his parents, what with their business, show business, being so chancy. Micky felt guilty for having dropped out, once his dad had gone, Mike knew. He’d mentioned it a couple of times, in dark-of-night, no-sleep confessions.

But did he harbour dreams of being able to make it in the world of movies and TV, like perhaps Davy did in the world of theater? Micky was in the right city, at least, Davy not so much. Pete said they were all four of them right where they were supposed to be. Mike wrenched his mind away from the bassist, although that was getting harder and harder to do.

Best not to think about it. More than likely neither Mick or Davy thought about what they wanted, long term. But one thing Mike _did_ think was that for the small amount of work Micky did, it wasn’t worth him paying his SAG Union dues of three hundred bucks a year. Not Mike’s call though.

Micky wasn’t settling. “It’s late, babe,” Mike cautioned. “But you wanna talk?”

“Nah. I just wanted to…”

_Cuddle. Be held. Feel close._ Mike put Micky’s reticent roll of his shoulders into thoughts for him. He made a turn-around gesture with his head and Micky wriggled for Mike to spoon him, his arm tight over Mick’s slim waist. It wasn’t that comfy, with Mick being so bony. Or that interesting, with him having that hardly-there ass. Not like Peter’s— Mike did the thought-wrench change-gear again.

“Mick, quit your damn wriggling!”

“I’m too hot!” the damn wriggler complained.

Mike loosened his hold and leaned back for Mick to pull off his pj jacket and sling it away, leaving him in just the thin striped cotton pants, to Mike’s boxer shorts. They settled again and Micky giggled. “Your body hair is _insane_!”

“Yeah? Well, when you can grow some, we’ll compare.” Mike rubbed against him, his chest to Micky’s back, his arm over Micky’s and his leg in between Micky’s, making him giggle again. _At least it’s cheered him up_ , Mike thought, dropping off to sleep.

He was only half-sleeping, as was usual when Micky was in his bed, and woke a little later with Micky shifting. “Quiet down,” he begged, his speech sleep-slurred. “I’m dog-tired.”

“I can’t sleep!” Micky wailed. He paused. “I can’t relax. Would you…you know…help me…?”

He did know. “I— Okay. Get over here.” Taking care of Micky was the only way to get him to shut down, quickly. Pete had tried teaching them all meditation or deep breathing or something, but this was quicker. Mike pressed flush to Micky’s back and got a hand inside his pjs and around his half-hard and quickly filling cock. He jerked him efficiently, muttering cooing, reassuring words, and within a minute Micky came in his hand. Mike grabbed for Micky’s discarded pj jacket to mop him and them up.

“Thanks,” Micky breathed, on a long sigh. He half-turned. “Want me to…”

“No.” Mike never did. It’d be crossing a line. A weird, slightly perverted line, but, hell, a line nevertheless. He’d take care of himself if he had to. Micky showed no signs of stirring when Mike climbed out of bed and walked to the adjoining john. He pulled on the cord for the tiny light above the mirror and caught sight of himself in the glass.

It would be easy if he and Micky…got together, but Micky wasn’t his type any more than he thought he was Micky’s. This was convenience and necessity, pure and simple. _Well, okay, not that pure…_ Did Davy and Peter do the same? Mike couldn’t imagine Davy with a guy and Peter…he didn’t want to imagine him with anyone. Else. _God._ Mike blamed that baby they’d briefly been responsible for. Seeing Peter cradling it in his arms, head bent over it as he took care of it had done this. That physical sight and the idea that Peter had had a baby with someone? That had created this. Because before that, Mike had never thought of the bassist as anything more than a bandmate. Had he?

He forced thoughts of Peter away before he did have to take care of himself. Micky was asleep when Mike got back to bed and although Mike could have taken Micky’s bed, slept the remaining hours there, he didn’t. He’d promised Micky comfort and shared what? Warmth? Companionship?

“We gotta see about getting you a dog or a racoon instead,” Mike muttered, sliding in beside him.

Micky gave a half-giggle. He could do that in his sleep, hold more or less coherent conversations, respond to dialogue. “Oh, job. Wake me ten and r’mind me totell t’morr’w,” came from him.

“Later, you mean,” Mike groused, pulling on a dark curl next to him on the pillow. But Micky didn’t react.

* * * *

Then it was later and breakfast, the daily routine that had become set over the almost two years they’d been there. It started with Mike putting the coffee on and getting together and setting out what there was for eating. Easy enough when it was usually cereal or bread or fruit. Then him grabbing a quick shower, all while Peter did his yoga and stuff out on the sundeck. And if Mike was early enough or real quick, he could sit at the bandstand window, sip his coffee and watch. It was an…interesting sight. Peter always invited him to join in, said he’d show him. Well, he did, if not in the way he’d intended.

Today there was no need for Mike to order himself not to gawk, to have to tear himself away. Peter, with Mike being later than usual, sat at the meeting desk, typing. The tapping and tinging of the typewriter made a nice sound. He typed well, although not half as quickly as Mike’s mom. Mike wondered what he was doing. Not a letter to Valerie—he could sit at the writing desk in the corner for that. It wouldn’t need this extra space. Maybe helping some group or other with a petition, about something they were against, or trying to change.

What had the last one been? Saving that old theatre on Wilshire, because it had a rare pipe organ in it? The largest one in LA, apparently, and Peter was convinced the group he belonged to could hold recitals there, once they’d restored the organ. Mike remembered that because of all Mick and Davy’s jokes about Peter’s huge organ. Even now Micky called him Big Peter.

Seeing Peter from above and kind of side on, from where Mike only now realized he’d stopped, halfway down the helter-skelter stairs, with his head bent like that was a bit like how he looked playing the bass. That angle, that fall of his hair, showing his nape. Peter looked up and caught Mike staring. He held Mike’s gaze, that faraway look in his eyes that made people think him a space cadet or slow. Mike didn’t agree. Peter was deep, with a hundred and one interests he got absorbed by, but, thank God, not swallowed up in, like Micky did.

Mike, just watched, until Peter kind of came to, came back to earth, and even then, for a few long seconds, Peter said nothing, and neither did Mike, both of them just holding eye contact. Then Peter smiled, slowly until it filled his face, lighting up that dark corner.

“Morning, Mike.”

“Morning.” Mike fought for nonchalance. “Busy there?”

Peter gave a half-shrug and stacked a few sheets of paper. “Oh, I think the newspaper’s come. I know it’s my turn now for work, unless finances are buoyant?

“I haven’t checked, but I doubt it.” _Miracle on North Beechwood? Not likely._ He started for the door and Peter’s words caught up to him, “Oh. You gonna check the want ads?”

Peter’s work usually consisted of playing as a session musician for recordings or filling in with groups of varying kinds. Those kinds of jobs came as and when, and Mike redrew the work schedule around him, quashing any dissention in the ranks. He was good enough to join any of the groups he sat in with, or any of the woodwind or brass quintets he worked with, but he said a regular gig like that wasn’t for him, that he couldn’t handle a permanent spot with others. Micky said it was because he’d have to remember to turn up every day, which he’d find tricky.

“Oh, Micky.” Reminded, Mike checked his watch.

“No, Peter.” Peter saluted him with his mug of some herbal tea or other.

“Ha ha. No, Mick said to wake him at ten.”

“ _Really?_ ”

Mike understood Peter’s disbelief. Micky wasn’t exactly a morning person. “Yeah. I know, and I don’t know why, but yeah. Maybe coffee will do it?” He poured himself and Mick mugs from the coffeepot.

“Not if he had a late night.” Peter came to join him at the stove, refilling his tea mug then handing the kettle to Mike to pour hot water into Micky’s coffee. They all tended to drink their coffee black as there was rarely any milk, and while Mike took his as it came from the pot, he didn’t think that advisable for Mick.

Peter was close enough for Mike to catch his scent and know that Peter hadn’t been in the ocean yet that day. That that should even have been a _thought_ threw Mike. He turned to watch Peter putting bread in the grill.

“Do you know the secret to comedy, business, and cooking?” Peter asked. “It’s all the same secret. So, not actually _that_ secret.”

“No?” Peter’s approach to things, the range of his interests, fascinated Mike.

“Timing,” Peter told him. “So, in terms of cooking, if we leave that _just_ long enough…”

Grinning, Mike joined Peter five minutes later in waving the grill pan at the bottom of the spiral stairs, wafting the aroma of still-burning bread into the opened door of the bedroom at the top.

“Fire!” Mike yelled, trying not to snigger. “Burning!” he added.

“Flames!” Peter called up. “Smoke!”

True, one tiny spark still flickered and acrid black tendrils were curling up to the upper landing.

“Hot!” cried Peter, putting the grill down and blowing on his hands.

“Man down!” Mike shouted, checking Peter wasn’t really hurt. “Save yourselves!”

“Evacuate!” Peter called upward through cupped hands, coughing a little. “This is not a drill!”

“As the saying goes, in case of fire…” Mike began.

“Run!” came with no beat missed from Peter.

They built off each other just like they did with their guitar and bass. A similar mindset and a good rhythm. It caught him anew and he paused, looking at Peter from under his eyelashes, then tore his gaze away.


	2. Chapter Two

“I know this is a lie,” came from the bedroom. “But just in case it isn’t…” Micky, dressing gown over his pajama pants and his hair defying gravity, crawled on hands and knees from the room, a wet towel wrapped around his face and his old teddy bear under his arm.

“‘Amazing how fire exposes our priorities’.” Peter pointed at Mick’s toy. He waved a hand at Mike’s look of inquiry. “Just a quote.”

They stood back for Micky to swing himself over the top of the staircase and drop to the main floor, his face-mask towel and raggedy bear lost on his descent.

“Hey, Mick. Coffee?” Peter gestured to the mugs on the counter.

“Toast?” Mike indicated the still-smoking squares of charred bread.

“Oh, very funny.” Micky gulped half his coffee and eyeballed the burned offerings. “Pete, you’ve outdone yourself this time. But never mind, because we’ll all be dining on lobster and salmon tonight.”

“What?” Mike had to ask, even if it was a gag.

“Eating caviar off imported crackers and drinking the finest French wine.” Micky jumped up a few rungs of the staircase and spun to face them, his gestures and tone declamatory. “Because the job I got us all? Fancy clothes _and_ a ritzy supper are included.” He kissed his fingers and threw the kiss to them.

Cheering, Peter leaped high and pretended to catch it.

“Wait a minute,” Mike objected. “What is this ‘job you got us all?’ You can’t just expect us all—and we’re not us _all_. Davy isn’t here. You know we agreed to make joint decisions and—”

“And that’s why there’s no time to lose!”

Micky always got theatrical anytime he was near or in a studio and it took a few days to wear off, even after he’d finished. All that smell of the greasepaint, roar of the crowd, Mike supposed. “Where’re we going here?” he asked, as Micky bounced from the staircase.

“To the beach! And don’t spare the horses.” But Micky slid to a quick stop and backtracked. “Better make this official. Where’s the meeting-record book?”

“Here.” Mike grabbed the minutes book, and a pen, shoving them into his drawstring pants’ pocket. The three of them vaulted off the sundeck and jumped down the rocks to the beach. His clothes could at least pass for casual beach attire.

“We’ve never had an official meeting on the sand,” Peter said, following along behind Micky, whose striped pj pants and dressing gown couldn’t.

 “It’s _not_ a meeting without all four of us,” Mike repeated.

“Ta-da! If I could request the assistance of a volunteer, or two…” Micky indicated Davy just ahead, lounging on a rush mat covered in a towel.

Mike looked at the small group of women Davy reclined in the midst of. “My Lord, he gets an early start.”

“Likes to check out the herd ahead of the pack,” Peter agreed.

“He times his outings to coincide with the women’s volleyball team’s practice…and breaks,” Micky explained. “Morning, ladies. If we could just borrow your…mascot, there, for just a minute…”

He nodded to Peter to grab one end of the soft mat while he took the other, and seconds later a spluttering, struggling Davy was born aloft, dipping in the middle, up and away from the startled and amazed girls.

“Put me down, you bastards!” he ordered.

“Carefully!” Mike added, not liking the glint in Micky’s eyes. “Sorry, l’il biscuit. Mick’s got some crazy story that couldn’t wait another second.”

“Some crazy job, too,” Peter threw in.

“If you’d kindly cede me the floor?” Micky waited for Peter and Mike to settle down with him and a still annoyed Davy. “How would you all like to earn good money for an evening’s work, decked out in killer threads and treads, with rich-swank refreshments as perks and not part of the pay?”

“What, being an extra, like you do?” Davy, the glint of payback in his eyes, righted his possessions that had been tossed about in the towel with him.

“ _Background actor._ ” Micky took the bait. “I’m always telling you. Jeez. Anyways, we need someone to work, right?”

“Me.” Peter raised a hand, sending a shower of fine sand over Mike. “Oh, sorry.”

“Well, you know Pete tends to get into trouble or crazy situations on his own?”

“Not always,” Mike defended Peter, tipping up the book he was writing in, to dislodge the sand from its center.

“Well, I think I’m gonna do this, even if it’s not my turn. You rearrange things for Peter all the time,” argued Micky. “And you know, our work could be communal too. It should be. I just like things better when you’re all around.” He hung his head, peeping up at them from under his eyelashes, Mike especially.

“Hold on there. We’re non-union and non-affiliated, unless they want us there to play music,” Mike cautioned, shaking the sand from his hat. He usually wore it in the morning until he’d gotten his crazy-from-the pillow hair under more control.

“No. They don’t want musicians and you don’t need to be.” Micky shook his head. “And I don’t mean they’ve already filled their union quota and can hire non-union for the remaining spots. It’s not a movie or TV. It’s for a party.”

“They want background people for a _party_?” Mike stopped writing the minutes in wonder. “What in the world?”

“A really fancy happening. Some new-rich businessman who wants to get into politics. Or is in politics. Or wants to influence politics. Or other politicians. I wasn’t really listening to all that,” Micky admitted. “Guess he wants to look as good as possible, you know?”

“Well, they’ll want me, then.” Davy stuck his chest out. “Dunno about you, though, Mick.” He ducked the flick at his ear.

“You said something about clothes?”

“Uh-huh. Black tie,” Micky answered Mike. “And no, doesn’t matter if we don’t have it. We have to look the part, see, which means going to Cosmos Studios and getting kitted out there as part of the thing.”

“Peter already has an evening suit, for playing concerts,” Mike argued.

“So he’ll have another for the evening. And one that he didn’t buy to go to Prom in, half a decade ago.”

“It was for college, actually. But yeah, it is a little dated and getting shiny at the knees and elbows,” Peter acknowledged.

“So, vote?”

“Hold your damn horses!” Mike glared at him. “You haven’t told us anything about the job—how you know about it, the hours, the conditions, the pay?”

“I heard it from a guy I met last night. Seems he’s starting his own agency for stuff like this. Renting out crowds for events, like packing out a place for the opening of a new store or restaurant, or cheering at a speech.”

“Oh, I studied that a little, learning about marketing at college.” Peter nodded. “The psychology of it works on the herd instinct, right?”

‘“Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.”’

They stared at Davy, who blew on his nails and polished them. “Just quoting the master, P.T. Barnum.”

“Yeah, a crowd attracts the public’s attention and stirs interest in a product or message, making it more visible,” Peter added.

“That’s right. Hey, you know, I heard they use a rented crowd for Frankie Catalina?” said Micky.

“ _Really?_ ” Peter shaded his eyes to look at him.

“Yeah, for his red-carpet premieres, or shooting on location, or anything! His people pay a mob to turn up and scream at him. And he doesn’t even know they’re hired.” Micky mimed zipping his lips. “So, yeah, we gotta be there seven-thirty until midnight, mingle around talking to pretty ladies and eating and drinking classy snacks _and_ there’s a supper.”

“And the pay?” Mike wasn’t swayed.

When Micky mentioned the amount, Mike’s jaw dropped, especially when he multiplied that by four. Peter wouldn’t have to go out to work and—

“So, motion carried, I take it?” Micky inquired, his face and voice the smuggest Mike had ever seen or heard them.

* * * *

 

“Fellas, _look_. I think I’m in love.”

Davy, the first to enter the huge warehouse-like building on the back of the Cosmos lot, spread out his arms to hold Mike and Micky back as he stared at the blonde assistant inside. He’d be extra susceptible, Mike noted—she had that hairstyle Davy and Micky called the sophisticated-lady look, puffed up and pulled away and back from her face for the ends to curl up in little waves on her shoulders.

Peter, bringing up the rear, walked into Mike. A loud _crack_ and a quiet, “ _Owww_ ,” sounded.

“Davy!” remonstrated Mike, rubbing the back of his own head. “You okay there, Pete?”

“Ummph,” came from behind the tissue Pete still had clutched to his nose from earlier.

“Cool it, guys! And hey, I saw her first. What? I’m taller, so I saw her over your shoulder like a half a block back. Deal with it, Tiny. Plus I get first dibs on the blondes. We agreed.” Micky strode into the barn-like place and up to the young assistant behind the counter. “Good morning. We’re the Monkees and we should be on your list to be costumed for the Edwards party? These are the access slips they gave us at the gate.”

The woman looked at the three bits of paper Micky handed to her and then at the four of them. “Someone can’t count.”

“Peter lost his.”

“Between the gate and here?”

Mike could see her point. It wasn’t exactly a long distance to the Costume Department.

“We think it happened when he fell out of the golf cart?”

“That I told you not to help yourself to,” Mike added.

“And that you crashed,” Davy couldn’t resist throwing in, staring at the woman.

Mike was more curious about the department. He’d seen pictures in movie magazines of the huge, three-floored wardrobe department at some famous Golden Age movie studio or other, and had expected something more like that, like a giant clothes store, organized into section, each bigger than a room and with its own attendant. This was really more like a base exchange depot, bristling with wooden shelves and wire stacks.

“But check the list from the agency,” Micky urged her, pulling Peter forward. “And just ignore his flesh wound. We usually do.”

Oh, Micky’s theory about that coiffeur was born out—this woman was wearing on her shoulders the long jacket matching her dress, her arms not through the sleeves. She peered at what could be seen of Peter’s face, either side of the Kleenex wad. He did look a little dazed. Mike…didn’t like the light that came into her eyes.

“Seems like you had a rough time,” she sympathized, her hard blue gaze softening. She offered him another paper tissue. “Maybe we can cheer you up.”

“Oh?” came muffled from behind Peter’s barrier.

“Do you want to know my measurements, Miss…?” asked Davy, standing in between Peter and the blonde.

“The children’s section’s over there,” Micky hissed, moving him bodily and filling the gap he’d just created, making Peter step back.

“Can I help?” came from their right and they all four jumped.

“I’m handling it,” the blonde assured the older, frumpier woman, pasting on a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “So please feel free to get on with admin?”

With a, “huuummph,” the older woman went back into the recesses of the warehouse.

“Judy.”

“Huh?” Peter, so addressed by the blonde, asked.

“Her name!” Davy muttered, exchanging an eye roll with Micky.

“So, Peter—”

“And Micky, Davy, and Mike.” Micky was irrepressible. “We’re gonna need top hats, spats, canes…”

“This way.” Still looking at Peter, the woman, Judy, lifted the hinged counter and ushered them in. She indicated a long, wide table covered in ranks and rows of formal clothes and accoutrements. “And this should put a smile on your face.” She ignored the huge forced grins Davy and Micky suddenly sported. “These are all giveaways. Find what you need and it’s yours to keep.”

“ _What?_ ” Mike queried over the happy exclamations from the others and the rasp of Micky rubbing his hands together. “It’s all _free_?”

“Mike, studios get rid of old stock to make way for new stuff.” Micky shook his head. “Excuse him, Judy. He’s from Texas.”

“Yeah, I am, and this seems like _new_ stuff, Mick.” Mike pointed. “Look at it.”

“Yeah, Cosmos just bought up Howard Films, and with it their stock, a lot of which isn’t needed.” Judy shook out several white dress shirts.

“Oh, that film studio in England?” Davy stroked a pink tux. “I loved all their classy dramas and saucy comedies. When one comes on the TV, I get homesick.” He waited, but she said nothing. “I think I auditioned for one, when I lived back home?” But she still didn’t take the bait, being too busy taking a tape measure to Peter’s shoulders from behind.

“Well, most of this was hardly used or not used, before they went bust,” she said, pulling out a two-tiered rack of formal shoes in different sizes. “And don’t forget accessories.” She ran a finger down rows of cufflinks in a large tray and smiled at Peter. “This diamante pair would look good with your brown eyes.”

Mike wondered what relationship, color or otherwise, eyes bore to wrists, and whether to point out they all had brown eyes, but was distracted by the tray of shiny cigarette cases, lighters and pocket watches Judy produced. It didn’t escape his notice that she selected fancy-looking ones for Peter, smiling at him as she did so.

She cut short Davy’s lamentation that the pink tux didn’t fit him by saying they should go to wardrobe for a fitting anyway, and any alterations would be done there.

“I thought this was Wardrobe?” Mike asked, looking at all the clothes.

“This is Costumes. We procure the clothes, Wardrobe puts them on the actors.” Her tone was snooty.

“Yeah, Mike.” Micky tutted.

“Well, it seems you’re going to an awful lot of trouble and expense for a silly party,” Mike argued.

“What Joannie wants, Joannie gets.” Judy folded their choices into garment bags for them and wrote their names on, asking Peter his surname.

“Joannie?”

“Now Mrs. Alan Edwards? She’s throwing the party for the rich businessman she snagged, who wants to get into the state senate. The studio got a lot of publicity when she married him and it’ll get a lot more when he gets in. You know, the former actress, Joannie Jans?”

All four of them were still saying, “ _Joannie Jans?_ ” to one another as they spent the next couple of hours in Wardrobe, being chalked on and fitted and re-chalked on and sitting around in various stages of undress.

“Oh! I found my access slip.” Peter held it up.

Micky made a face. “Don’t anybody ask him where he put it for safekeeping.”


	3. Chapter Three

“Oh, man, I so could have worn a kilt!” Micky lamented, eyeing the men ahead of them who were wearing what Mike assumed was their national dress. Micky kicked at a marble chip, sending it shooting up the mansion’s walkway, then cursed and polished the toes of his dress shoe on his opposite pants leg.

“Erm, you’re not Scottish?” Mike tried, peering ahead, trying to see how much farther the walkway stretched.

“And with legs and hips like yours?” Davy mocked. “Now, _I_ could. Peter could.”

“Mike?” asked Peter.

“Yeah, you could,” Mike replied. Peter’s legs were well-toned, something his tuxedo pants didn’t hide. Showed off, in fact, with that cut, just as his jacket didn’t hide anything either. And his hips…

“I was asking Davy… I meant…never mind.” The very edges of Peter’s lips curled up in a small, private smile.

“How much farther?” Davy butted in.

Micky had made them park the Monkeemobile as far away from the house as possible. Valets or attendants were stationed every so often, so guests couldn’t get lost in the landscaped gardens. Much as Mike wanted to. He grinned when Peter offered Davy a piggyback. “You could have gotten a ride in with Toby,” he pointed out. “Bet she’s stationed nearer, that sweet little convertible of hers.”

“Well, I’ll probably be gettin’ a ride with her later. A ride home as well. First. If you know what I mean.” Davy didn’t even bother winking. He straightened his pink monstrosity of a jacket. Must be _his_ national dress? Mike wondered. Then the l’il biscuit’s words registered.

“ _Again?_ ” he couldn’t help asking.

“You’re back together?” Peter had only recently realized the couple had split.

“Not exactly. We’re more sort of as and when.” Now Davy winked.

“Oh?” Peter looked puzzled.

“I know, right?” Micky’s tone held incredulity. “Like, going back for _more_? On her part, I mean. Not Davy’s. He’d make her his regular if he could.” Micky imitated a boomerang, for some reason. “Well, I guess it saves her any work when she’s, erm, in the mood for love, him being so easy. And why is she even coming here?” he continued, before Davy could retaliate at having been called a slut. “She ain’t hurting for cash.”

“I don’t guess _all_ the guests are here because they’re getting’ paid, Mick. Didn’t she say her father was invited, and asked her to go in his place, with them already away for the summer?” Mike couldn’t imagine having a beach house, one of the first built on the street, and then going someplace else for a vacation, even if he was a rich businessman. Still, it left the Beechwood place for Toby, who’d started living there year-round, now she was grown, and she was one of their better neighbors.

“Oh, she got the short straw?” came in Micky’s most innocent tone, but not innocent enough to stop Davy glaring at him. “Well, I guess having Toby makes up for losing out on that Judy dame. Pity about her lousy eyesight.” Micky patted Davy.

“She had vision problems?” Davy asked, frowning.

“She must’ve.” Micky made a face. “When I was right there and she only had eyes for Peter? I guess she’s half-blind. And she couldn’t see you at all. Well, that’s not so unusual…” He pretended to search for Davy.

“Stay loose, you two.” Peter got in between them before it escalated and wrapped an arm around each. “Hey, you know what we need, for a little group bonding? Mike, come join in?”

He couldn’t refuse Peter and slotted himself on the end next to Micky for a Monkee walk. They hadn’t done that for a while and it took them a few steps to get going without tangling. It was harder in formal clothes on a narrow paved way than in beachwear on a wide swathe of sand and they ended up not only laughing, but a little dishevelled. Peter straightened Micky’s jacket for him.

Micky pulled the watch on its chain from Peter’s pocket. “Man, I’m still digging that pocket watch. It was much the nicest. And I got us the jobs. I should have had first pick.”

“Mick, cool your chops!” Mike was tired of his bellyaching.

“It’s okay. Here. Have it.” Peter unclipped the heavy timepiece.

“Really? But I’ll look silly with two. Swap?” Micky gibbered his thanks as he took the watch Peter held out and handed his smaller one over.

“Peter!” Mike remonstrated. “You already traded him your cufflinks!”

Peter looked up from fastening the clasp of his new watch. “They were a little, well, flashy for me.” He held his, formerly Micky’s, discreet pearl studs against the larger yellow-diamond-effect squares glittering on Micky’s wrists. “And I don’t really care which watch I have or if I have one, especially when they don’t even work.” He opened the cover of his large, fat ex-watch for Micky to see the fake dial.

“None of them work.” Mike had kept his usual wristwatch on, out of sight up his sleeve. “They’re props. Gaudy ones at that.”

Like the house, he thought, looking up at it now they’d reached the front. That looked more than a little flashy, as Peter had put it. In fact, just as their things were props, this mansion could have been a movie set. And on that theme, he wondered how many of the staff, from the aging butler checking invites at the main door, to the younger uniformed footmen and maids weaving about with trays of drinks and taking coats, were hired for the evening? They might even have come from the same agency as the guests.

Stepping inside the large entrance hall with its ornate flooring and even more ornate chandelier, he caught Peter’s eye. “Glitzy accessories makes sense now, huh?”

“I’ll say.” Peter appeared a little dazed, revolving to take it all from the roll of blood-red carpet leading to the foot of the huge staircase, where a woman in a sparkly silver dress held court, to the two massive golden Oscar statues flanking the stairs, one on either side. “Did Joannie Jans actually win an Oscar, or is this just to make people think she did?”

“Two.” Mike pointed out the twin statues. “And are they actually that big? They look so itty bitty in the ceremony on the TV, you know?”

“I’m kind of expecting to see those velvet rope cordons holding the crowds back, either side of the hall?” Peter whispered in Mike’s ear, making Mike fight not to react. “And perhaps life-size carboard versions of famous stars? Like Audrey Hepburn with sunglasses, James Dean with a cigarette…”

“With their faces cut out for people to stick their heads through?” Mike riffed, falling into their usual call and response.

“Oooh! What if she hired look-a-likes?” Peter’s eyes were wide and he peeped around.

“Cool it!” snapped Micky as they tried to stop their sniggers. “Wait.” He halted them as they prepared to mingle. “Who are we?”

“David Armstrong Jones, Chelsea beautiful people photographer,” came Davy’s prompt reply, in his most nasal aristocratic accent. He’d obviously prepared.

“Well, I’m George M. Dolenz, eccentric genius inventor, in case I find backers for my jetpack idea.”

“Jetpack?” Mike blinked. “What in the world happened to the gyrocopter?”

“What indeed?” With a mysterious tap to his nose, Micky glided away, following in the wake of a server bearing delicacies on a silver platter. He was usually hungry.

“You should be you. Michael Nesmith, songwriter. Not only is it good enough for anyone, but that’s how she knows you,” Peter said to Mike. “Joannie, I mean.”

“Yeah, right. Like she’d remember me, one of the little people.”

“Don’t you bloody start with the short jokes too.” Davy stalked off, his face sour.

“We’re all splitting up?” Mike was a little alarmed. He kinda wanted to keep an eye on Micky, in this environment. Oh, not just because he thought Micky might get into mischief, but being here, he could be mingling with old friends or his father’s old friends, from this world, which might bring him down. And if Davy was posing as a photographer, hoping to meet models or even pretty girls, that was a recipe for disaster.

“You’ve got to let them fly the nest some time.”

“What? You’re saying I’m—” _A mother hen._ He couldn’t bring himself to utter the words.

Peter shrugged. “It’s good you look out for them. Look after them.”

“ _Them?_ I look out for all of you.”

“Not me. Not in the same way.” Peter said it as a challenge. Mike could see that, but didn’t know how best to respond. “You don’t see me in that way,” Peter underlined.

“I…no. You know I don’t.” Mike swallowed. “You’re older than they are, for one thing,” he gabbled, in case Peter’s follow-up was to ask just how Mike did see him, then. Because that? That Mike had no answer to.

“And for another?” As a group, they tended to stand close together, perhaps a carry-over from being tightly packed on small stages, but Peter was suddenly right there, his heat and scent surrounding Mike. “You said for one thing, so I’m asking what’s another thing?” he clarified.

“Well, that…you help with them.” Mike tried not to blush at the lameness of that reply.

“So…like co-parents?”

Mike kept quiet in the face of that slow smile tilting Peter’s lips. _Safer._ He found his arms going into a fold, him needing to create a barrier.

“Sorry.” Peter caught at Mike’s wrist before he could cross his arms. “That was…uncool. I’ll shut up. Micky’d say it was hunger making him run his mouth. I’ll go with that. And actually, I am thirsty.”

Mike was grateful for the excuse. He slipped his wrist free of Peter’s grasp, but not because he didn’t like the feel of those long and slim yet strong fingers on him. Not at all. “Well, then, how about we get some of that fancy French wine we were promised? And even fancier caviar?”

“Oh, it might not be that upmarket. Like, salmon roe instead of sturgeon. Quality’s often skimped at events like this,” Peter warned him as they headed for an alcove farther up the hall that held a small table full of snacks.

Mike wondered anew about Peter’s upbringing. He’d lived in bohemian squalor in Greenwich Village—and their pad wasn’t _much_ ritzier—and yet he seemed fine in a big shindig like this, just like he did in any of the nightclubs they frequented, or any of their neighbors’ houses. Whereas Mike usually and especially tonight, despite his well-fitting clothes—his tux an identical cut to Peter’s—felt gangling and awkward.

“You look good,” Peter said, smiling.

“Thanks.” Mike took the glass of wine Peter handed him from the serving girl, hoping it would help. Huh, it’d have to be a magic potion to cure all that was afflicting him lately. He frowned. Had Peter picked up on his thoughts, like they did when they shared one another’s fantasies? That would be…worrying.

“Do you think we’ll see celebrities?” Peter sipped his wine and tried a tiny pastry whatever.

“If we do, remember not to look them in the eyes or ask for autographs.” That had been made clear to them, along with other rules for engaging in positive and decorous social behaviour, which had been broken down into that they should perambulate from room to room, mingling and chatting and not over-indulging in anything that could cause a regrettable incident. And which Micky had broken down even further into ‘keeping moving and not eating or drinking too much and throwing up’.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later.” Peter gave that dip and twist of his head that smoothed his bangs into place. He’d side-parted his hair in deference to the occasion, just as Mike and Micky had slicked theirs smooth.

“I guess,” Mike muttered, watching Peter set off, thinking he might as well go from room to room—different edibles seemed to be laid out and replenished in each. Maybe each room had a theme to its decoration and food? If it did, he couldn’t discern it. Probably the rooms just had numbers, to help the wait staff keep track of which snack stations needed refilling at any given time.

Four rooms later, he’d learned as much as he’d ever need to—and more—about assemblymen, the name for members of the California State Assembly, the lower house of the California State Legislature. There seemed enough of them there, including the guy who was leaving the lower house for the upper house, the State Senate, and whose position their male host was hoping to fill.

“Huston?” A man frowned when Mike replied to the question where he was from. Again. “Is that in the 80th district? Near the border?”

“Huston, _Texas_?” Mike was by now expecting to be asked where he was from by everyone he got into conversation with, like some kind of ritual. But this reaction was the most insular yet. These people were very stuck in their grooves. And they’d all seemed to be businessmen or business owners or business consultants prior to being elected, A couple at least had been council members or supervisors, including the assemblyman for Mike’s district.

This time, he excused himself and moved away before the next part of the ritual, asking what he did, could unfold. He began to wish he’d concocted a cover story—trying to explain he was a musician, and then not a classical one with the LA Philharmonic or the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra was tiring.

He caught up with Micky at the supper tables in the grandiose dining room, to find him staring in admiration at the champagne fountain centrepiece of the room. “Isn’t that genius?” he breathed, holding out his glass to fill it from one of the streams tinkling from the spout at the top into the first bowl down. “It’s like, the future, you know? All drinks will be served like that. Push a button and they flow.”

“Mick, they do. Like, soda fountains?” The streams and the splashing made Mike want to take a leak.

“Well, beyond drinks! Food. Food will come like that too.” Micky scooped out a bit of the fruit floating around the lower bowl to drop into his glass.

“Liquid food?”

“Yeah, like soup!” Micky thought a bit more. “Or broth. Or bouillon. With crackers floating in it.”

“Then sloppy pudding for dessert?” Mike mistrusted the gleam in Micky’s eye. “You are not to attempt to automate the kitchen.”

“You can’t stand in the way of science, Mikey.”

“Oh, I can,” he promised. He took a quick peek around but couldn’t see an almost six-foot-tall bassist with shining dark-blond hair.

“Hey, half Monkees, the M Monkees.”

Mike was just glad the display in front of them was a fountain and not a tower. He didn’t want to think what might have happened had Micky been reaching for a glass when someone not only spoke behind him, but clapped a hand on his shoulder.


	4. Chapter Four

“Hey, Toby,” he greeted their neighbour. “Wondered if we’d see you.” He also wondered what she still saw in Davy, seeing as she’d gone through the infatuation stage, progressed to the going on dates phase and then the catching him coming on to someone else finale. Well, maybe Micky had a point, that it was handy and convenient—for both of them.

“You look nice.” Micky gave her an appraising up and down look. No secret he liked her—she was blonde—but having been with Davy, she was off-limits to him. Point of pride.

“Yeah, you do,” Mike agreed. They usually saw her in beachwear, or in more fashionable clothes in the clubs and discos. She liked slacks, and slouchy caps, wearing her hair loose on her shoulders. She dressed smartly in suits for work, he knew, because she’d come once or twice straight from some assignment or piece to a gig or club, when she and Davy had been together, but this was another level.

“Thanks. You two look good too. This is my mom’s gown,” she confessed. “I don’t have matronly evening dresses and pearls like this! Well, I’m kind of here in her place. Small price to pay to get the beach house with no parents for most of the summer, so…”

She narrowed her sky-blue eyes at the fountain. “They had that for the wedding too! I think it’s the same champagne, circulating in it. And I bet the snacks are left over from the wedding reception as well.”

Mike inspected the triangle of something he’d been lifting to his mouth. Decided to eat it anyway. “Where are you sitting?” he asked her, indicating the tables. “There’s an order, a system to the seating, I guess.”

“I think it must be income related.” Toby didn’t look as though she was joking, examining the top table and the one next to it, both filling up with older-looking men and their wives. “Well, busy weekend planned, huh?”

“We’d rather not know.” Micky shuddered. “You and Davy, you know? I mean, it’s cool and all and no reflection on you, but I’d just rather not think about him and his…busy weekend planned.”

“I meant you four, if tomorrow’s still on, but what— Oh!” She slapped his arm with the back of her hand. “It’s _nothing_ like that. I’m using him to make Eddie jealous. You remember Eddie?”

Mike didn’t.

“I explained it all to Davy when I asked him and he said it was fine by him.” Toby looked from Micky to Mike. “Wasn’t he listening to me? Just thinking about something else when I was talking and agreed blindly when I finished?”

“Can we refuse to answer, in case we incriminate him by saying that’s true?” Micky replied, setting his smile to winsome and tilting his head to one side.

“Maybe he just forgot. Or didn’t mention that part to us,” Mike tried.

With a “ _hmmm_ ,” Toby stalked off.

“I’ll go find him, warn him.” A gleam in his eye, Micky set off.

Peter had said more than once that those two loved drama, creating it, stirring it, Mike recalled. He went to take his seat. The food was fine, much better than he would have thought after Toby’s remarks, but making conversation with his neighbors during the meal was just as strained as it had been earlier, despite the guys having to change places after every course, until he ended up next to a pretty-enough chick.

“Are you walking background too?” she murmured.

He turned to her. “Excuse me?”

“Or do you call it _supporting artiste_ , to make it feel more important?” she continued, a grin starting.

He got it. “Walking props?” he suggested. That was how he’d been thinking of it. “How did you know?”

“I’m beginning to think everyone under the age of forty-five is.”

He laughed, wondering if that made Joannie Jans over forty. He asked the chick’s name, told her his, and she was groovy enough, with her dark hair and pretty eyes, but he couldn’t get himself into her. Maybe he was more into blondes, these days, like Micky was. Living in California could do that to a guy, he guessed. Yeah, lighter-colored longer hair, and kinda…not exactly graceful, although that was nice, but coordinated. That was more his type.

He caught sight of Peter suddenly. He’d been obscured by another life-sized Oscar ornament thing that Mike now understood was an actual person, painted gold and standing immobile on a base. Well, except when he or she shifted, like just then. And presumably walked from spot to spot. Huh, seeing that would have given the four of them a Monkee scare all right. He squinted over, and his heart panged, seeing Peter chatting away to his partner.

No, it was good Peter was enjoying himself. He should be with pretty girls. He was personable, talented, interesting—he had a lot to offer. Mike just hoped the chick, whoever she was, got Peter’s off-beat sense of the world, understood the way he saw things. He tore his gaze away from the table to his right and onto his partner, babbling on about what he did, the group, and that she could come hear them tomorrow. The brunette, Lorri, repeated the address back to him and said she would.

“Bring some friends,” he urged her, pulling out her chair for her to stand at the meal’s end. “We need all the support we can get.”

“Oh. I thought you were—” She pulled her face back up into an almost as perky smile as it’d worn before. “Sure.”

 _Never mind Peter—I should be with cool chicks_ , he thought as they parted for the final stretch of the party. He should go after Lorri and… Shrugging, he strolled, helping the supper settle. None of the house’s ground floor he’d seen so far was off-limits, and now he was right at the back, entering a long, warm, clean-scented room that was all graceful arches, both inside and the windows, with large sheets of glass in between the window ones. The room had an unusual color or glow, not just due to the soft gleams of spots and lights, but the slightly moving blue floor?

It took him a second or two to understand that this was a room with a swimming pool, one that was flush to the ground like a lake or pond, its deep-blue water making a slight to and fro in the muted light. Half of the pool stuck from one big open arch out into the garden. _Wow._ Wouldn’t he love that? Well, who wouldn’t. He walked around it, curious about the view from the big windows, then thought he’d go farther round, to see the view from the landscape end of the pool. Which was when he saw Peter, at the water’s edge, standing just behind a small group clustered together, the men accepting cigars from a server. Another server twisted and turned there too, lighting them.

Peter turned, looking about him, as if feeling someone’s stare upon him. Mike could tell the moment Peter realized it was Mike—he stilled and his head came up slowly, until he met Mike’s gaze full-on. It was just like that morning, both of them motionless, their eyes locking, but unlike then, Peter had no chance to react.

No chance because a movement rippled like a Newton’s cradle through the small knot of people at the pool’s edge, leaving Peter, the last man, stumbling, then flailing in his attempt to stop his motion, but to no avail. With a splash he fell backward into the water.

“Peter!” Mike tore over, parting the group to either side of him. He bent low, thrusting in an arm to haul Peter out. “Are you okay?”

On the bank once more, dripping from head to foot, Peter nodded. “Guess I lost my footing in the crush,” he said, looking miserable. “Sorry.”

“Hey, it’s not your fault.” Mike glared at the guests still huddling there, all of whom were denying having even brushed against, never mind knocked into Peter. “For God’s sake, he’s not gonna sue! He just needs a towel.” He looked around for assistance. “Where can he dry off?” he demanded of the cigar-lighting girl.

She ducked her head. Belatedly Mike remembered the ‘keep it discreet’ edict. “Erm, I don’t know the layout of the house. I don’t really work here,” the girl mumbled.

“Just help us find the changing rooms,” Mike ordered through gritted teeth, squeezing water from the back of Peter’s jacket surreptitiously.

They were easy to locate, off to one side of the room, and supplied with large towels. Peter blotted at himself. Mike stood ready with a smaller towel for Peter’s hair.

“Micky’d ask if I was trying to make a splash,” came muffled when Peter swiped at his face.

“Yeah. Well, you can’t go back out like that.” Mike stuck his head back out of the room into the pool area and spotted the little match girl hovering. “Where can we go to dry his clothes?”

She didn’t know. Of course. With a scowl, Mike re-entered the changing room, exited the other door, into the corridor, and hollered for assistance. For good measure, he picked up the phone in the room, pressed one button after another, and asked whoever finally answered for help too.

“Sorry,” Peter said again, wringing his jacket out over a sink.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. But we gotta get you out of those wet clothes.”

“And into a dry martini? I wouldn’t mind. This is unfair—I’m not even drunk.”

An older man, his snootiness making Mike think he was the butler who’d been at the main door earlier—or his twin—chose that moment to enter via the non-poolside door with a basket for Peter’s suit and shirt. He informed them there were facilities, just beyond this area, and took the clothes away, even the socks and shoes, saying he’d do his best, but…

“Say, hope you waited until an hour after you’d eaten before you went in,” Mike said, wanting Peter to laugh, not feel down at the look they’d been given.

Peter did laugh, securing the towel around his waist. Mike kinda wished he’d cover his chest, like chicks did. His nipples seemed more peaked and flushed a darker pink than usual and— _How do I know that?_ Well, he’d seen Pete’s chest hundreds of times, just like he had Micky’s and Davy’s and they’d seen his. It was probably the soft, pinkish lighting in here, making Peter’s nipples perk like that, making his chest hair gleam golden.

“Here.” He more or less pushed Peter into the armchair and moved behind him, to rub at his hair for him, then prowled around the room for a hairdryer at least.

“Good thing I had matching socks on for once.”

Peter’s remark had Mike looking at his feet. He’d always liked them, thought them nice, as feet went. Well-shaped, like his hands.

“And even better I didn’t go true Scotsman today.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t free-ball.”

“Oh.” Mike had looked away when Peter had peeled off but looked now when Peter showed him the waistband of his boxers. “Yeah.” He swallowed and cast around for a change of subject. _Of mood._ “I guess that’s why mothers go on about wearing decent underwear, you know, like in case of having to go to hospital? And Lord knows as a group we’ve seen our share of bizarre accidents.”

“Like being injured in a discotheque fighting Russian spies?”

Mike tensed a little, as he always did when that subject came up, but Peter didn’t pursue it, instead recalling another crazy adventure they’d gotten into that had involved them having to quick-change and so reveal their underwear.

“And how about Micky, in that Mrs. Arcadian get-up?” Mike almost snorted with laughter. “I didn’t know chaperones wore _jockeys_ under their dresses, man!”

This was safer, them as bandmates, roommates, buddies, joking, laughing, recalling past times. He glowered at the person who walked in on them, because this one squealed on seeing them, not having known anyone was in there, and of course not knowing anything about Peter’s clothes.

“I’ll go and see what’s happening.” He shoved open the other door to see Peter’s half-dried clothes returned, spread out on a table in the corridor. Huh. Whoever was supposed to have delivered them or informed them of the return hadn’t. “I’ll let you get changed,” he said, handing them over and ducking back out of the pool door.

Peter was out in a few, retying his bow tie, looking…even better damp. The stupid, goof-off atmosphere Mike had worked to re-establish vanished in whatever the fuck this haze was, one in which Mike’s eyes were drawn to where Peter, jacket slung over his shoulder, fiddled with his shirt sleeves and cuffs for the short remainder of the evening and the drive home.

Home, where Peter’s slim, supple, freckled-dotted wrists and strong, shapely tan hands featured in the jerk-off Mike had to rush up to bed to have, taking advantage of the window of time where Micky waited downstairs for Davy to arrive home. And jeez, jacking off thinking about Peter, while the poor guy in question presumably slept innocently or kept Micky company one floor below?

Mike would have preferred it otherwise, but no matter how much he tried to think about any chick he had dated or lusted after, it was Peter’s reddened nipples on his wet chest that dominated his thoughts. Peter’s bulging crotch, in snug briefs that hugged the pertest, tightest-looking ass, an ass that sat atop muscular, athletic legs, legs adorned with fair hair.

 _And don’t get me started on his body hair. Or his lips_. Not thinned in concentration, or turned up in laughter, but plump and ripe, wrapped around Mike’s cock after his strong, slim hands had worked it to fullness. Those lips led to thought of that throat. It was wide, Mike knew, but would Peter be able to take all of Mike? Mike was big. Not to boast, but he knew he was longer and thicker than average, and his erections lately? _Massive._

Well no problem: Peter could use those skilled hands, hands that could span an octave on the piano or the organ and— _Jesus, Peter’s organ._ Even the fuckin’ word was arousing. What would Peter’s eyes look like when _he_ was aroused, turned on? They’d be darker. Not caramel. They’d lose that innocence and purity. Go darker. As dark as— Before he could think of what, he came, hard, his head full of images of Peter flushed with arousal, his skin dewed with sweat, his eyes half-closed, using his hand and mouth to get Mike off.

And imagining just how different to that Peter would look when Mike pleasured _him_ , Mike fell asleep, half-jolting awake on realizing that Peter’s wrists had been exposed like that because he’d no longer been wearing his cufflinks.


	5. Chapter Five

“What d’you mean, ‘misplaced’?” Mike echoed when he brought up the subject the next day.

“It’s middle-class for lost,” Davy deadpanned.

“Where? Okay, that was dumb. A dumb question,” Mike amended, hastily. “If you knew, they wouldn’t be, right? Did you lose them in the pool? No—you had them after. In the changing room? You left them there?”

Peter, in the shotgun seat next to Mike, the place Mike liked him, bent his head over his music notation notebook, pencil in the hand that wasn’t tapping on the dashboard. “As if it matters! I don’t care.”

“But—”

“Focus up, team!”

“If that’s supposed to be me…” Mike knew Micky delighted in imitating him. But Micky was right—Mike should be paying attention to the road. “How much farther along?” he queried. “Feels like we’ve been on La Cienega forever.”

“I guess not much more?”

“It couldn’t be.” They were into the auto business section now, all mechanics and dealerships. He’d have expected an agent’s office to be in a more central zone. The nondescript office building they pulled up in front of looked a little gimcrack to him.

“What?” Micky read his face. “Oh, stop looking like that. I know you expect agents or reps to cheat you on principle, but…”

But this one didn’t anyhow, paying them all the agreed amount even down to the half-hour. Mike took it a little dazedly. “That’s almost a month’s rent,” he said, when they were out in the street again. “And with what we’re hoping to make tomorrow…”

Davy stopped. “Still? Isn’t this enough?”

“For rent, utilities, gas, food, and necessities? No,” Mike scoffed.  “Anyway, I thought you were into the idea. You were before.”

Davy shrugged.

“It’s tradition! We do it every year for start of summer. Music, drink, food, hot and cold running chicks…” Micky knuckled into Davy’s hair.

“Don’t do that. And one year doesn’t make a tradition.”

“Tell me again about the cufflinks,” Mike said to Peter, as the kids argued.

“And watch.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t find either after. I looked around and in the corridor. Tried calling someone.” Peter opened the car door. “It doesn’t matter.”

* * * *

“He _said_ it didn’t matter.” Micky’s tone was mutinous in reply to Mick when they’d dropped Peter and Davy off at the Farmers Market on the corner of Third and Fairfax, Mike still unsure about having entrusted the two of them with getting the bulk of the supplies for tomorrow. Davy didn’t seem keen and Peter…was Peter. Who deserved trust and responsibility and— He blinked at the hand waved in front of his eyes. Good thing they were at a stop light and Micky could take his hands off the wheel with no problem.

“So why do I gotta give him back the ones he gave me, just because he lost his? When I lose stuff, you say I’m careless and it’s my own fault.”

“Mick, I don’t think he lost them. I think they were taken. Stolen.”

Micky shrugged. “So tell Joannie and whatever her husband’s name is. They should know, if someone on their staff’s on the make?”

“Not necessarily their employees. Coulda been someone hired through an agency – attendants or guests. Coulda been any of a hundred people.” He changed tack. “It would be a nice gesture on your part.” Yeah, like that’d fly. “Basically, with stuff in the pad being in common, it’s just saying he has first call on them, if he and you ever need them again. No big deal, right?”

The stubborn pinch to Micky’s lips was full elder brother being told to give something up to his younger siblings. But Mike’s equally stubborn insistence was born of guilt at thinking he’d caused Peter to get distracted, slip and fall and thus get robbed, even of dumb costume accessories. “Micky?” he wheedled.

“Oh, okay, but…I’m gonna go get more.” Micky signaled and turned onto Venice.

Mike frowned. They had their share of stuff to do, for tomorrow as well, without going back to Culver City and Cosmos Studios. “You don’t need more silly accessories.”

“What if we all get another joint job like that, huh? We can’t be so lucky as to get more clothes with it. And you could ask about playing gigs while we’re there! End of shoot wrap parties, screenings, hiring out back lots for party or event venues – studios gotta move with the times. Worth checking with the Cosmos admin?”

“You just wanna see that blonde dolly again.” Mike kinda knew how Davy must feel, when he needled Micky.

“She was half a fox,” Micky agreed, making for the studio. “I wouldn’t mind.”

But Judy didn’t want to see him. Or them. She wasn’t pleased, anyway, after Micky, having talked their way onto the lot, asked for her and she was fetched by another middle-aged woman, with a _tsk_ and a sigh, from the depths of the big Costumes department.

“Hi, Judy! We were here yesterday, about getting clothes for the Edwards party?” Micky began, a huge smile plastered on his face.

“Someone can’t work a calendar,” came her unpromising reply. “That was last night.”

“Yeah, we know. We went. I just wondered if you have any more of those cool bits and pieces?”

Her flat, “Why?” held even less promise.

“Well, Peter? The blond one? You remember him, right? He kinda lost his.”

“And?”

“Or they were stolen!”

“I repeat, and?”

Mike winced at the acid she dripped. If he were Micky, he’d have given up at that point. Not Mick, though.

“So do you have any more? For free?”

Her eyes were like blue ice chips. “No. All those items are now logged into the stock.”

Mike frowned. “But—”

“So if there’s nothing else?” she snapped.

They both shook their heads and Judy gave a stiff nod towards the depths of the warehouse from where someone called her name. Mike jerked his chin at Micky, to signal they should go.

“All right. Worth a try.” Nothing kept Micky down for long. “And yes, okay, even though Peter agreed to swap his for mine, I’ll give him his cufflinks and watch back. But don’t blame me if he loses those nice shiny ones too.”

“I won’t.” Mike took a last look around the space and saw Judy standing frozen where she’d half-turned to go, her hand coming up to her face. _Weird._

He forgot about it as they ran errands—mostly meeting the managers at Lady Jane’s and then the Union Jack, trying to arrange auditions to get gigs at both places—and collected the other two Monkees later, Peter from his Skills Exchange Workspace on Crescent and Davy from New Star Recording Studios on Vine. Would this be the day the l’il biscuit’s charm worked sufficiently on the receptionist to get them cheap, or preferably free, recording time? Mike…doubted it. He waited for Peter to run back into the building and grab the market shopping he’d almost forgotten.

“Okay, asses and elbows, guys,” Mike ordered back at the pad, narrowing his eyes at Micky who usually ribbed him for his use of military slang.

“We don’t need to get busy _now_ when it’s not until tomorrow!” Micky protested.

“Gives us more time to clean.” Mike was merciless. “Unless you wanna help Pete with his…what is it?”

“Homemade granola.” Peter unshelled another pale sunflower kernel and took the next striped seed from the large hessian bag on the table. “In addition to my granola and yoghurt desserts for the party, we’ll have enough for breakfast for a week.”

“A _week_? Seems you got a month’s supply there at least, shotgun.” But Mike set to chopping raw nuts and dried fruit at Peter’s direction, keeping an eye on Davy who was supposed to be cleaning the closets and cupboards while Micky did the bathroom.

Mike nudged his foot against Peter’s ankle, stilling when, after a second or two, Peter rubbed back, slowly, almost stroking. The sensation shot an electric current through Mike. He jerked his foot away before he moaned or gasped, and Peter looked up, his face guarded. “Mike?”

“Um…” Mike almost forgot what he’d been going to say. “Oh, yeah. Countdown to Mick grousing in five…four…”

“Oh. I— Three…two…” Peter took over.

“So I’m doing this now _and_ cooking and decorating tomorrow?” floated out from the downstairs bathroom in an aggrieved LA accent.

“Mick, all the ‘cooking’ you’re doing tomorrow is tipping packets of potato chips, pretzels and candies into bowls!” Mike called. He cut across Micky’s protest about his world-famous sandwich dish. “And what is this ‘decorating’?”

“What dec—?” Micky came out, rubber-gloved-hands held high. “I’m threading popcorn onto strings and making garlands! What? It’s traditional!”

“Just don’t eat it from the string when you get the munchies this time,” Peter advised.

With a, “Can’t make rash promises, Petey,” Micky bounced back to work.

Mike frowned. “Hm. Davy’s awful quiet.”

“Hiding in the No Room, reading a music magazine,” Peter predicted.

Mike shook his head. “I rounded them up and hid them.”

“Even this month’s _Fabulous 208_ , which arrived yesterday and that he stashed in the garage? Behind the oil cans?”

“Damn.” But Mike wasn’t irritated that Davy was slacking off in their communal downstairs clothes room. He felt fine where he was, sitting and working alongside Peter, rationalizing who got the oven when, to bake Peter’s batches of granola and Mike’s Texas sheet cake.

Peter didn’t tease him about enjoying baking and frosting, or Mike Peter about the wholesome recipes he learned at his skills co-op. He lent a further hand, mixing the organic honey and coconut oil into the raw oats, shelled seeds, chopped nuts, and dried fruit, listening to Peter’s suggestions about having a bowlful of the mixture with a different fresh fruit for breakfast every day, even if Mike privately thought pouring Kellogg’s from a box was easier. The vanilla smelled nice, anyway, and the singles cued up to play on the juke box were good choices. Mutual choices. They had tastes in common, and what was individual was complementary.

‘“Bake for ten minutes, until lightly toasted?”’ Micky read from Peter’s recipe when Peter shoved the first of the baking sheets into the oven and stood there counting down, so he didn’t get distracted. “Might be underestimating the time involved, but in general, good words to live by there, big Pete!” His mime made his meaning clear.

“So is ‘swab the deck’ good words to live by.” Mike pointed outside to the sundeck and pantomimed scrubbing it.

“What? You’re Admiral Mike and we’re at sea now?”

“Micky—” Mike was glad the door knocked, before Mick went into some nautical fantasy. “Your turn.” Probably. He didn’t keep count. Thought Mick didn’t either. “It’s probably Mrs Purdy to lend us her cake pans.”

But it wasn’t, if the way Micky slammed the spyhole closed and turned wide-eyed to Mike before opening the door was any clue. It was someone Mike never thought to see again, let alone in their pad.

“ _Judy?_ ” Micky queried. “Wow! I mean _woah_. No, I mean why? No, what?”

“Erm, hi.” She didn’t look icy or acidic now. She glanced from Micky in front of her to Mike coming up behind him. “Oh, you both… Well, that makes it easier.”

“Makes what easier?” Mike reached Micky and stood hip to hip with him.

“An apology. To apologize.” She rubbed at her forehead, the action loosening a swatch of stiff-looking hair from the huge barrette keeping the blonde locks high and tight off her head. She looked from one to the other. “I was offhand earlier. No—” She interrupted herself and them. “Rude. I was rude to you. I had a lousy day—as usual—and I’ve got another headache, but that’s no excuse. So, I’m sorry. I was out of line.”

“I understand.” Micky gave a grin. “I’m often out of line.”

She rubbed her forehead again. “That’s nice of you.”

“How did you know where we lived?” Mike butted in.

“Oh, I didn’t know you both lived here. I looked up the details from Micky’s name, to come apologize. Sorry for snooping, too.”

“Who’s…Hey, Judy, isn’t it? Hi!”

Mike moved aside for Peter to join them.

“Oh, you’re here too? And yes, Judy, that’s right. You remembered!” She smiled at him, her face doing that softened thing again. “Oh, all four of you live here?”

“We’re the Monkees.” Micky waved a hand.

“Oh, like it says on the red Pontiac out there.” She pointed over her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Peter, head on one side, observed her rub her temple.

“Headache. I stopped off at the pharmacy and got aspirin. In fact, could I ask you for a cup of water? I didn’t get anything to take them with,” Judy replied.

“Of course.” Peter, so petitioned, ushered her in, leaving Mike to close the door. It had been rude of them to leave her standing there, he admitted.

“…caused by tension?” Peter was saying by the time Mike reached them at the kitchen table, which thankfully wasn’t too littered. The pad’s usual tore up from the floor up appearance was worsened by the cleaning in progress. He swiped the remaining bowls and bags over to the counter for Peter to set the glass of water down. “The head, neck, and shoulders carry most of the tension we build up.”

Judy sipped from the glass and rolled her neck on her shoulders. “I can believe that. I get all bunched up, at work. Like this, you know?”

 _Yeah, trying to balance a jacket on your shoulders must make them hunch like that._ Mike looked at the one she was wearing today. As if she heard his thought, she slipped it onto the chair back behind her.

“I’m learning Indian head massage,” Peter announced. “It’s kind of kneading pressure points, like on the scalp, to cleanse and relax a person.”

“Oh?” Her eyes were huge as she stared up at him. “You know how to do that?”

“Sort of. I’m exchanging guitar classes with the teacher’s son for it.”

“I’m his guinea pig,” Micky informed her. “Got the furry costume, the carrots, everything.”

“Not really.” Peter grinned. “But Micky does let me practice on him, mainly the neck and shoulder areas.”

“Well, the scalp squeezing and scratching tousles my hair,” Micky deadpanned.

“It sounds _wonderful_. I’d love to try that, if you ever need another volunteer to train on.” Judy unclipped her thick barrette, her stiff hair not really budging. “I wouldn’t mind the tousling.” In the silence that fell, she stood. “I see you’re busy. Sorry to intrude. Maybe I can hear you play, some time.”

“Tomorrow.” Peter straightened from checking the oven and hip-bumped its door closed. “Come back here tomorrow. It’s our house party. You can hear us then.”

“Really?”

“Sure! Everyone’s welcome. If they have a twenty-five-cent contribution to make,” Micky butted in.

“Oh, for a good cause?” Judy asked.

“Yeah, our rent.” Micky beat a badum tish on his knees and the table edge.

The blonde smiled, still looking at Peter. “If you’re sure I won’t be intruding, I’d love to.”


	6. Chapter Six

_Intruding. Judy intruding. Judy the Intruder. Must be a reason it rhymes._ Busying himself tidying the bureau nearer to the front door as Peter showed her out, Mike heard her asking what she should bring and what she should wear, and Peter’s same answer to both queries: _whatever you feel like_. Then the two of them were outside the front door and their voices too faint to make out. Huh. Seemed they’d be having one extra tomorrow. He wouldn’t have thought their kind of shindig would be Judy’s scene. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but…something or some _one_ was.

“Hey, is someone cooking the popcorn already?” Micky halted and sniffed.

“Oh, no. I guess that’s just what overcooked granola smells like. Probably tastes like too,” Mike replied.

“ _Jeez_ , Mike!” Micky turned the oven off and wrenched its door open, pulling it to and fro. “Davy! Davy! You can update the ‘days without a domestic fire, flood, or accident’ chart now,” Micky called across to him when he emerged from the No Room.

Mike spotted the magazine sticking out of Davy’s back pocket, like a layer of padding. “You preparing for an ass whopping there?” he asked him.

Davy bristled. “If that’s some sort of threat ’cause you think I’m skiving off, just know right now that _no one_ touches my—”

“Ass-ets!” Micky interrupted. “Pete!”

Peter came running in, alone, to rescue the granola, and shoved the next batches in. Mike tensed at the knock on the door, but this time it was Mrs. Purdy, with the baking pans and the news that Mr. Babbitt’s car wouldn’t start, and he was of course too mean to pay the after-hours call-out charge for the mechanic—meaning he might not be setting off tomorrow as planned.

“ _What?_ ” Micky exploded. “The whole point of the party is it’s for the end of June Gloom! The cloudy days that don’t clear up until Babbitt leaves for his cheaper-before-full-season early summer vacation? The summer that don’t really start until he goes away? Well, _bummer_.”

“Mick, go help him?” Mike urged.

Micky swapped his rubber gloves and scrubbing brush for his overalls and toolbox, and Davy was sent to clean the sundeck in his place.

“Oh, look. Judy left her cardigan sweater.” Peter hung it on the coat stand. “Oh well. She can collect it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Mike echoed.

In the silence, his need to ask Peter about earlier, when they’d been working at the kitchen table, grew. He’d tried to pass it off as an accident: Peter’s foot had rubbed against his. But Peter’s touch must have been deliberate. His foot wasn’t some disembodied thing: Peter _had rubbed his foot_ _against his_. Oh, because Peter, absent-minded, had misinterpreted, then reacted like he might have done to anyone, guy or girl, because he was a free-spirit, a hippie, whatever? But the touch, the caress, was weighing on Mike now. He burned to know what it could mean. Because Peter was into chicks, right? He wasn’t into—

“Yeah, man! I’m digging it already.” Peter checked if any of his trail mix stuff was cool enough to tip into the plastic tub he had ready.

“Yeah?” Mike tried to gauge—

“Playing for the neighbors? Pot luck? Sure!”

“I don’t think it’ll be _that_ kind of pot, fellas.” Davy, already stopping for a break, gave a smile at his own wit, then about-turned at Mike’s scowl.

Mike glowered. There was little chance of a subtle looping back to the subject now, with them one man down, Micky being gone. And if he’d fixed the car in two minutes and was loafing off in a local café or bar, Mike would find out. Mike would just have to come straight out and…see Peter shooting through the door, calling something about “round ice trays” and “Mrs. Homer”.

Mike took that as a sign that his previous wrench-mind-from-it tactic had been the right one to employ. Okay, it made him feel cold, as though the sun had gone in, but, well, he could do it. He signaled to Davy to come in from the sundeck he must have finished a while back and get to work on the bandstand. Lord knew everywhere needed a good turning out and hosing down.

“You just use the start of summer party as an excuse,” Davy muttered, sharing Mike’s thoughts as well as his rag-cloths and glass cleaner, tackling the back windows while Mike washed the stained-glass door. “And you’re late. Spring cleaning is in spring, as the name suggests.”

“So I can’t work a calendar.” He grimaced at finding himself echoing Judy’s sarcasm. “No, I’m not that much of a neat freak. We only really big-clean twice a year, in early summer and in December, what with all the partying then.”

They shared a smile. December was a lot more to them than Christmas or plain New Year.

“But nothing for February...Valentine’s.” Davy's tone struck Mike. He was looking over at the kitchen.

“Well, no. Maybe if we had partners. I mean…” He didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t want to catch Peter’s eye, where he was again working in the kitchen, so focused instead on rubbing at a stain and recalling how it had occurred, last party.

“And we don’t even know if we can go ahead with this one.” Davy sploshed his rag into the bucket. “So might not be any point—”

“ _He’s gone!_ ”

Mike jumped at Micky’s declamation, not having seen or heard him come in or leap onto the low coffee table.

“Well, he will be, early tomorrow,” Micky clarified.

“You fixed it?” Mike clapped him. “It’s an early summer miracle!”

“Hey, dudes.”

“Nyles!” Davy waved at their platinum-blond neighbour, standing in the open doorway.

Nyles revolved in a circle, looking confused. So what was new? “Woah. This is squaresville! What’s happening?”

“Nothing, man.” Mike took the armful of foldaway chairs from him.  “Thanks for these.”

“No music? No people?”

“Tomorrow? Party’s tomorrow?”

“That calendar difficulty’s catching,” Davy muttered.

“And you can come? Didn’t you say you were away, your Cape Cod week?  Big annual get-together gala thing in Provincetown?” Mike tried to help their spaced-out neighbor.

“Oh yeah! Cape Cod. The place. Not the act.” He sniggered.

“Wh—” Micky started, stopping when Davy shook his head at him, wincing.

“Yeah. Big Provincetown bash. That’s why I’m here. Fancy dress? I need an outfit.”

“Mike…” Davy pulled Mike down to him as Nyles followed Micky to the closet. “I wonder if he’s got that right. If they told him it was _fancy dress_ , it probably means formal dress, don’t you think? Suit, even black tie? And he thinks…and he’s gonna turn up—”

“ _A Tarzan costume!_ ” came in enraptured tones from the depth of the Monkees’ communal wardrobe. “Gypsy? Matador?” came in equally ecstatic tones. “Wait—a _chaperone_ outfit? Far out!”

Mike and Davy clutched each other to stay upright, rocking with silent laughter.

Nyles poked his head out. “But I really need a top hat, white tie and tails and—outta sight, man!” He copied their shaking and choking as if it was a new dance.

“H—help yourself,” Mike spluttered. “We’re gonna wash up and brush up, right, Monkees? And then we’ll walk you home, Ny.” Not that he didn’t trust their friend to find his own way back again, but… “We have to warn and invite the neighbours.”

“About what?” But Nyles vanished into the No Room again but Mike could reply. Probably for the best.

Washed and suited and booted, Mike, Micky, and Davy were accompanied by Peter, too, on his way back to Mrs. Homer’s, with the same ice trays he’d gone to collect, only filled now. And later still, duty done, their formal suits abandoned for casual clothes once more, the decision was to dine on some of the popcorn Micky was making for the party, with some of the chips and sodas they’d gotten, all of them too exhausted to cook more and still half-full from yesterday.

“It’s a real pity guys don’t carry purses, like chicks do. We could have taken snacks home with us,” Micky lamented.

“Well, if you’d worn a kilt, what d’you think the sporran’s for?” Davy asked.

Micky paused, trying to work out if that was a wisecrack. “And Peter forgot to ask for a doggy bag, with all the swimming,” was his comeback.

“So talking of asking, you asked Judy.” Mike made it a non-query, his eyes on the popcorn pan he was shaking.

“Mmmhm.”

Mike gave the pan an extra-hard shove at Peter’s non-answer. “It didn’t seem she’d like this sort of party.”

Peter slowed in his ice tray filling, spoon in his hand. “What d’you mean?”

“Lemme translate. Like, she’s not into the same scene as you, the same bag, you dig? Like, she’d freak out at a freak-out?”

“Michael…” Peter paused now. “Are you…mocking me?”

“A bit, yeah. Sorry, shotgun.” Mike hoped his goofy face covered everything, hating himself a second later when Peter’s wore its ‘I expected more of you’ look of mild reproach.

“You only saw her in her work clothes. She said everyone there’s older than her, so she dresses to fit in. Her hair too.”

“Hey, mellow out!” Micky elbowed Mike aside and bent to listen to the popcorn. “And it’s nice to have a squeeze with a salary! I can’t _wait_ until I do. Davy says they pay for stuff, buy you stuff…”

“Mick! Davy!” Mike didn’t know where to start with that.

“So, you two got birds arranged?” Davy swung his glance from Micky to Mike.

“What? The whole point of a party is to meet chicks!” Micky scoffed.

“Yeah, but does no harm to have a bird in the hand. You can always trade up when you see what’s in the bush.” Davy ripped open packets of potato chips and winked. “Like I’ve got Toby eating out of my hand.”

“But—” Mike tried not to wince when Micky stood on his toes. Oh. So he hadn’t told Davy yet they knew he wasn’t so irresistible that chicks came back for more. “I thought you’d split up,” came his lame finish.

“Keep up, mate.” With a tut, Davy tipped the chips into a huge bowl.

“Bet _you_ can’t,” Micky muttered. “And you said Lorri’s gonna bring a friend?  He met a chick at Joannie’s and put the moves on her.” He jerked his thumb at Mike to explain to Peter.

“I did not.” He…hadn’t, had he? And why was it so important to clear that up, here, now, with Peter looking up from uncapping cold drinks and— “She said so, yeah. More than one, I think.”

With a “Yay-hey! Girls’ night out tomorrow…and guys’ night in tonight!” Micky, bearing fresh popcorn, led the way to the living room.

Mike let Peter go ahead of him, in those old jeans that were just a little on the right side of too tight. And by the time Mike got there, everyone was settled in their usual places, meaning Micky was in the middle of the sofa, from where he’d slide to the floor within a half-hour to be nearer to the TV, having forgotten his glasses, leaving the sofa to Peter and Mike.

“Davy, pass the chips over.” Mike pushed the coffee table into position in front of them to hold the supplies.

“Fellas, you know we agreed you wouldn’t say chips. You know it makes me want a chip butty. A French fry sandwich,” Davy clarified.

“You can put chips in a sandwich.” Mike dropped into his corner spot and reached for a flat round chip. “Why, down among us poor in Texas, it’s known as redneck lettuce, y’all.”

Davy’s guffaw made everyone laugh. This was nice, being in of an evening, like this. If they had to be out, he wished it was to play a gig. He glanced over at the band podium.

“They’re too tired to practice.” Peter caught his eye, and, seemingly, his thoughts. “Besides, it’s hardly a discriminating crowd tomorrow. Just relax.”

And Mike could, there, in his usual place, surrounded by the familiar sights and sounds of, well, _home_ , and inhaling to catch its familiar scents: faint salt-sea, remnants of sun-sand, trace of woods and herbs, and that tickle of apricot.

Just as he categorized them, making sure everything was in place, Peter leaned back and they locked gazes behind Micky’s head. Neither looked away, just as they hadn’t yesterday morning, or evening, …and as they didn’t more often than not. It didn’t…mean anything, though, right? That Mike knew Peter’s scent, liked inhaling it deep into him, and wondered if Peter did the same with his? What scent would he have, to Peter? Something Texan, like oil, or Amaretto, or chili? _A prairie?_ That made him have to hold in a chuckle

“What?” Peter searched Mike’s face.

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking about honey mesquite and buffalo grass and common persimmon.”

Peter blinked. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Texas must be an interesting place.”

 “Shush!” came from the floor between them. “I think this is the week she’s gonna karate fight wearing just the leopard skin bra and panties! I have to watch!”

Mike wanted to ask how them talking meant Micky couldn’t see underwear, should it come on the screen, but Peter shifting into his pretzel-leg thing to fill the sofa space left vacant, and so sitting closer to Mike, derailed him. “Not on this network, she won’t,” he settled for.

Micky didn’t reply, or didn’t hear, too occupied purring and growling his appreciation of his favorite private eyeful. “That was seriously good TV,” he sighed, over the jaunty theme music of the comedy that followed.

“Now look,” Mike scolded as Micky beat along to the bongos of the spy-fiction on after that. “You got yourself all worked up and you know _The Man From U.N.C.L.E_. gets you hoppin’! You’ll never settle for bed now.”

Peter stopped working out the harpsichord notes of the theme tune. “Hmm. Not necessarily.” He got up, scrubbed his hands at the sink, and returned, carrying several sheets of paper. “Stay right there, Micky. I need to do my homework.”

Homework? Didn’t sound like school to Mike, those noises Micky made sitting between Peter’s legs with Peter rubbing little circles down his neck, then squeezing and scratching his scalp, referring now and then to his diagrams. And Peter’s voice, explaining what he was doing, that baritone deeper, smoother, played on Mike’s nerve endings like Peter would on a harp, if he ever got his hands on one, like he wanted.

Peter spent long minutes pressing behind Micky’s ears at the base of his skull and Micky grew quieter and stiller. When Peter slowly took his hands away, Micky toppled over.

“Bloody hell, Peter, you killed him!” Davy snorted.

“He’s asleep.” Mike thought he’d leave him there, cover him in a blanket. “Wow.”

“Want me to do you?”

“I…” Mike made the mistake of catching Peter’s gaze. It seemed darker, more intent. He swallowed.

“I have more practice to do?” And Peter's innocent look was back.

“Sure?” What else could he say?

Later, in bed, as sleepy and relaxed as Peter had promised, Mike pressed over all the places Peter had on his hand—the bases of his fingers, in between them, where his wrist met his palm—and even the spot on the sole of his foot, reliving and still feeling Peter’s touch. And with that soft haze came smug satisfaction at Peter having touched _him_ first. Him and not some Judy-come-lately intruder.


	7. Chapter Seven

Waking the next morning, Mike squinched his eyelids closed when they tried to open, afraid that if they did, the reality of the new day breaking in would disperse the clouds of sensation he was still floating on. He had another minute of the touch of memory-Peter before he moved his head on the pillow and the rustle of a piece of paper had him opening his eyes.

Still, at least Micky’s _Thanks for leaving me downstairs on the floor, you son…of the South. I’ll do the same for you next time you pass out_ made him smile. He took the pen from his bedside table and replied _You’re welcome, you Angeleno nutjob. And feel free._ What he’d feared was correct—being awake did pull him from the haze he’d tried to prolong, but, as he lost that sensation, others took its place—and all of them connected to Peter. The strongest was that deep-timbred voice asking, “ _Want me to do you?_ ” It rang in his head, its echoes tempting him.

Because, _God_ , he did. He usually preferred to top, to be the one fucking, and of course had imagined himself taking Peter. As in, pushing him off stage and into the nearest dressing room, to show him exactly how much he appreciated those tight gray pants that left nothing to the imagination, either front or back, and those arousing, sexy hip thrusts Mike increasingly felt were aimed in his direction. Peter’s thick leather belt, with its eye-catching off-center buckle was employed to good—or wicked—use in that particular fantasy, once Mike had ripped it free; not only in delivering a half-dozen thwacks to that pert ass as a punishment for his behavior, but then to strap those tan, freckled wrists together, making Peter his prisoner.

Or he’d fantasized about dragging Peter down the sand to the make-out rocks and teaching him what those sinfully short shorts, those fucking obscenely short and tight red swim shorts, did to Mike. That scenario even had a scent, the way Mike was forced to use sun lotion as lubricant, to ease his taking of Peter. Peter who might struggle and cry out at first—which, yeah, would inflame Mike further—but who Mike had squirming and moaning for _more_ , _harder_ , and _don’t stop_ , within minutes.

Oh, he had gentler, more romantic scenarios in mind too, of course. Peter, stretched out on the bed, pliable and horny as all hell after a few glasses of wine, for Mike to feast on and get off half a dozen times, each climax smooth and easy-flowing from the one before, before he claimed him. Mike taking Peter someplace pretty and classy, like that indoor pool in the Edwards’ Hills mansion, Mike’s touches and caresses working more magic than the opulent surroundings. Yeah, Mike would be able to bring those more tender ideas into play once the initial raw edge, that desperate unchained hunger, was blunted. Not…sated, Mike didn’t think. Couldn’t see that ever happening.

But “ _Want me to do you?_ ” Yeah, whatever Peter wanted, Mike would agree to. Would give him. Do for him. And if that included Mike taking the passive role, having Peter bone him… He hadn’t played receiver in some time, but for Peter, he’d lie down anytime. Or hell, stand up, if Peter wanted to bend him over a surface and make him his. Or throw him against a wall and screw his brains out. Yeah, Mike’s cock approved of that notion. Gave it a standing ovation, in fact.

Still lying flat in bed, he snaked his hand down his chest and had just reached into his boxers when a giggle reached him from the next bed. Mike froze and slowly, so slowly, turned his head to see…Micky asleep, and now snuffling at whatever the dream-joke had been. _Fuck’s sake._ Well, maybe for the best. Indulging himself in another fantasy-Peter jerk-off wasn’t exactly gonna get the blond off his mind, now was it?

He should go out for a run down the beach, maybe a swim, while the day was still calm. Not think about that sudden dark gleam in Peter’s eyes, that flash of heat he’d seen yesterday. _Twice_ , he realized. The first, when they’d locked gazes earlier in the evening, had been a brief flare, but later, when Peter had offered to massage him, the light in his eyes had been longer and stronger and… _deliberate_?

 _Oh, fuck this._ He wasn’t some lovestruck teenager, sighing over an infatuation, begging the moon goddess or an advice columnist or what the hell ever to tell him if his crush liked him back. No, he was marching right down there right now to where Peter was no doubt bending over on the sun deck, and demanding to know what the hell the guy was up to with his words and his actions, getting Mike all hot’n’bothered, all stirred up like that. Yeah, he’d put this whatever the fuck this was to bed right now and—

Before he could berate himself for the stupid, revealing language he was using, he ran down the stairs, faster than even Micky usually did, to confront that annoying Connecticutian who seemed to think it was funny or clever to get Mike aroused with his tight blue jeans and his unbuttoned white shirt and his… _fuck_. _Fuck. Fuck. His_ o _range bunny pajamas_.

Mike halted, dry-mouthed and weak-kneed. He’d assumed he’d be safe for months—Peter only busted those out in winter. That all-in-one and its matching nightcap, like a kid in an old-fashioned storybook. You could practically see the candle in its holder and a glass of warm milk. And it all went to make Mike feel the biggest, dirtiest pervert ever, thinking such filthy thoughts about a sweet, naïve guy, one who was innocently making party snacks for a dumb neighborhood get-together he was excited about.

“Mike?” Peter glanced at him as he forced himself to descend the stairs. “Come give me a hand here?”

Mike’s feet stuck to the floor. He must be snagged on some of the glue or nails he’d used yesterday to make quick-repairs on sagging and weak floorboards, when he’d moved their furniture to clean under it and remembered why things were placed where they were. But glancing down showed him nothing that had caught him. Glancing down at Peter, however, was a whole ’nother story. Those damn pj’s were loose as all hell, yet kinda flattened themselves to Peter’s crotch. And showed—

“Come taste this?”

Mike clutched at the bannister behind him. Peter in those footy pyjamas, licking and then holding out a goddamn _lollipop_ and then inviting Mike to… _Peter with a lollipop._ Mike had thought for months the guy had some sort of oral fixation, how he loved popsicles and ice creams, and Mike had learned lately to avoid the sight. Even Peter nibbling on a candy bar was dangerous, the way he made such a performance out of eating chocolate fingers and twists. But now, with his face scrunched in concentration as he sucked and licked what Mike realized was his granola stuff mixed with yogurt and frozen into…a sucker.

And Peter, his sweet face thoughtful and innocent and, _oh God, boner time._ “What, good buddy?” Mike couldn’t recall ever having been prouder of getting his voice under control.

“Taste this for me.” He frowned a little at Mike hanging back, and beckoned him forward…with the sucker. “Is it sweet enough?

Mike’s feet cooperated with Peter, and not Mike, and carried him over, which was when Peter’s words landed home. “Taste…lick that? That you’ve been sucking…”

“I don’t want to waste two.”

Peter waved the round popsicle on a stick right up to Mike’s face and Mike made a grab for Peter’s wrist to steady it, keeping his fingers slack and not tightening them into a bruising grip or feathering them across Peter’s firm, tan flesh, so he could get his tongue tip to the dessert. Peter’s eyes, wide with eagerness and curiosity as they always were, were on him as he took a tiny lick and, for a quick-march-beat of a second, Mike thought he glimpsed some flash of that darkened gleam, some flicker of awareness, of intent. But before he could be sure, it was gone.

“Get a good taste. A proper lick.”

Mike dropped his gaze and pressed his tongue obediently to the sweet. “It’s fine?” He coughed—his throat was dry.

“Hmmm.” Peter’s response had Mike shifting when he stood. Then Peter licked the dessert again, flattening his tongue against it and dragging it from the bottom to the top. He arrowed the tip of his tongue, circling the rim of the round popsicle, then poked it into a crevice of the not-perfect sphere. He sucked, his lips plumping and his cheeks hollowing around the ball, and capped off the performance by taking the entire thing into his mouth, then releasing it. Mike swore he heard a _pop_ noise. His imagination supplied slurping and stings of saliva and—

“I wonder about dipping the tip.” Peter gestured to the tray of yoghurt popsicles and a tablet of dark chocolate.

“ _Peter—_ ”

“So it can be sucked off?”

His attempt at interruption had done nothing to stop the guy. This was deliberate. It had to be. No one could be that naïve, not even him. _But why?_ The guy was into girls. There’d been Valerie, some chick back home he’d mentioned, and more. Was this him, what, _practicing_? Or, like, free love, whatever that meant? Either way, or whatever way, it was playing with fire. “Peter, have you— Do you—” No. _Stick to the here and now._ “Are you…” And he couldn’t.

“What, Michael?” Peter’s voice wasn’t usually that deep, so deep it resonated in Mike’s chest. “Have I…what?”

“Realized I’m makin’ chocolate cake?” Mike bolted forward and snatched up the block of chocolate. “We don’t want too much, do we?”

“Too much… Yes, less is more.” Peter crunched the final bit of his dessert and nodded.

 _Or more is more._ Like that huge fuckin’ bulge Peter was sporting. “You shouldn’t wear those pj’s anymore,” escaped from Mike. “They’re, I don’t know, unsuitable.” _They flatten your ass_ , he couldn’t say, although they did and it was a cryin’ shame. And the way they clung to Peter’s crotch was…disturbing.

“It’s almost wash day. I’m nearly out of clothes.” When Peter turned back to his desserts and bent low to shove them back in the freezer, Mike averted his gaze.

Because there was no way, even if Peter was into guys, that they could…that Mike could… They were bandmates, partners, and co-workers didn’t do co-workers: one of them even coming on to the other, would affect the group’s dynamic, its balance. Right? It was wrong, right? The only good thing about the fog of confusion Mike was in was that it cleared away the haze of arousal. He worked hard to achieve normality and thought he’d got it. Least, none of the others remarked on him being off, or out of whack or whatever as they spent the day finishing the preparations.

“Nuh-uh!” Micky folded his arms. “I’m cooking too, just like Mike, and no one’s making him do final cleaning.”

“Cooking! He’s just been mixing and icing and you’re making some sort of Swiss roll sarnies!” Davy complained, watching Micky spread cream cheese and sprinkle things onto a tortilla. Micky rolled it up then cut it into sections.

“It’s pinwheels,” Micky corrected.

“ _Roulade_ ,” Peter said.

“Bless you.” Mick, of course.

“And why is all the food cut up into bits?” Davy pointed at the sheet cake Mike was cutting into squares and putting onto plates. “Are a busload of toddlers coming?”

“Think they’re already here,” Mike said and, grinning, dabbed a smudge of leftover chocolate frosting onto the tip of Davy’s nose, then held the plastic mixing bowl too high for him to retaliate. He dunked it like a volleyball to Micky, who skimmed it like a frisbee to Peter, Davy leaping in vain and protesting the whole time.

Later still, not long before kick-off, they came together around the table to decide what to paint on the banner.

“ _Welcome one and all_?” Micky made a gagging noise at Peter’s suggestion. “ _Get your summer fun here._ That’s much better.”

“Is it?” Peter argued. “In Canada, it would be _Eh, Neighbour_. With a u.”

“Wow. That’s exotic. Hey, how about an LA version— _Hey, dudes_?”

“In England, that’d be _Oi, Mates_ , or, _I Say, Chaps_ , if we were upper class,” was Davy’s contribution.

“ _Howdy neighbors_.’ Mike, who’d helped himself to the paint while they were debating, spoke the simple phrase aloud as he wrote it on the white fabric.

Peter took Mike’s wrist, where he still held the brush, and added a comma after _howdy_. “There. Doing it together makes it better.”

No matter how hard Mike tried to keep it light, he needed a minute, and while the others went to string up the banner and set up the honors box on the cigar-store Red Indian for entrance fee contributions, he made for the No Room. He had to hunt out a tablecloth anyway, for the long surface they’d made from borrowed tables that they’d blocked off the downstairs bedroom with.

In the closet, he caught sight of Peter’s tux and wondered if the items Peter had said had gone missing were, well, in a pocket. Peter wasn’t the most organized of guys. No, they weren’t. Mike saw Micky’s—with its cufflinks still on its shirt. How had he gotten the shirt off with the cuffs still fastened? Skinny little jumping bean. Those trinkets were communal, should be on a shelf to be easily found by all.

 _Trinket_ , he corrected himself. One cufflink; the other wasn’t there. No surprise, the way Mick treated his clothes and possessions. Mike plopped the one remaining sparkly link into a tray on the middle shelf and patted the waistcoat for the watch on a chain, not finding it. Noise from the main room told him someone had arrived—the party had started.

And started as it looked to go on, fun and busy, people and not just neighbors arriving, chatting, eating offerings, drinking and half-dancing to the jukebox. Applause rang when after half an hour, the Monkees took to the stage for their first couple of songs, their plan being to play a couple every thirty minutes or so. Peter seemed back to normal, vibing to the music, not trying to torment Mike. _I guess I imagined it. Wanted it_ , Mike told himself. And huh, seemed Peter was doing a Davy, jumping from the podium when they finished to greet a girl.

Mike assumed the chick, in slacks and shoulder-strap top, her blond hair hanging straight to her shoulders, was a pal of Toby’s, or some beach bunny or other until she turned and he saw it was Judy. _Woah._ She did dress differently in her off-time. And seemed way clingier too. Busy, he lost sight of the two of them, and soon Micky was signaling him it was time to play again.

Mike signaled back and made for the closet for a new high E string first. His was about to snap; he could feel it in the increased tremolo. The No Room door was ajar, and uneasy, Mike stilled, then shoved the door all the way open.

The figure in the middle of the closet jumped, her blonde hair flying.

"What— _Judy?_ "


	8. Chapter Eight

“What in the world are you doing in here?” Mike demanded

“I thought it was the ladies’ room.”

Mike eyed her, where she stood behind and halfway along the rail that held the majority of the Monkees’ clothes. “Really? ’Cause there sure ain’t no john back there.”

“No, of course there isn’t!” When she walked to the end of the rail and out into the closet, her face didn’t hold the light lilt of her tone. “When I realized where I was, I thought I’d see if my sweater was in here. I left it here yesterday.”

“It’s on the coat stand. You musta seen it when you came in?”

“I guess I didn’t…other coats must be on top of it.” She raised her eyebrows and chin at him, telling him without words to step back, she wanted to pass him.

He didn’t. “So you got cold, all of a sudden? You need your coat now?” Mike had no idea why he was pursuing this.

“No…” Judy dropped her gaze a little. “If you must know, I was waiting for Pete. He said to…I mean, well, we arranged to meet in here.” She raised her eyes now, hers full of meaning.

“In—” He caught that meaning after a second, so fuckin’ pleased he hadn’t blurted the question out like a moron. God, understanding they were plannin’ on playing some grown-up version of seven minutes in heaven made his heart sink. He buoyed it back up. “Well, seems you’ll have a wait and a half—we’re just about to play again.”

He reached up to a shelf and rooted around in the basket there for the guitar string he wanted, holding it up as if in proof of his words. He stood back then, ushering Judy out first, like the gentleman he wasn’t, not the way he was feeling. He glimpsed Peter with his bass, showing a group of people some chord, by the look of it. “I guess Peter forgot? He gets talking to people, girls, and…” He shrugged, then waved wide at Peter, pointing to the podium.

That was mean of him. They had no set time to play, could even not bother for a while.  But—

“All right?” Peter, plugging into his amp, shot him a sideways glance.

“Me? Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Mike waved at the crowd, trying to summon up some clever way to turn things around on Peter. _I see_ you’re _all right,_ with a pointed look at Judy, in the cluster of people nearest the stage, wouldn’t do.

“And he’s all righter now, because I bet that brunette just arrived and waving back there is Lorri! Dibs on her blonde friend!” gabbled Micky, all in one breath.

Mike hadn’t even noticed, and didn’t particularly care. He felt strung-tight now, and not in the same way he had earlier, when Peter had held that lollipop dessert out for him to suck, then tongue-fucked it himself. The atmosphere felt different now. And yet, it was kinda connected, he felt, announcing their next song and acknowledging Lorri.

Because, just like earlier, Peter was showing he wasn’t as innocent as he might look or seem. For all Peter’s shyness, there was _no way_ the guy was cherry. But meetin’ up in a dark closet at a party to make-out… Mike hadn’t known he was quite such a fast worker, though. It must be Davy’s influence, him filling Pete’s head with advice or Pete copying him.

Mike hadn’t intended to shoot a sour look across at Davy, but found he was, anyway. Peter he narrowed his eyes at, trying to see if the bassist was copying Davy’s pick-one-out-and-pick-her-off technique of catching a chick’s eye at the start of a song, doing a double-take, then staring mesmerized at her all the way through the number, as if singing and playing to her only. No, Peter seemed to be groovin’ out to the music as usual, his happy grin and exuberant moves not for any one front-row blonde in particular, far as Mike could see.

What he did see, after this short set finished, was Judy clinging to Peter like a sticker burr to bare feet. Angry at himself for his meanness, Mike made an effort to get talking to her, or at least listening, where she and Peter were part of a group of mostly vacationer kids, he thought. Beechwood property, being beachfront property, was _hot_ property in the summer, with a group of incomers, and he remembered one of these girls from last summer.

“And what do you call this, over in England?” she called over the music and chatter to Davy, holding up her plastic cup of cold drink.

“Fizzy drink or soft drink,” he replied, slathering his accent on thick. “Soda’s the water that comes out of a syphon.”

“No!” The girl was lapping it up like Micky did Coke. Seemed Toby had been traded in. “Tell me another one.”

“Well, I can tell you a terrible mistake I made with the words for things, when I was first here. In New York actually.” Davy flashed that knee-weakening smile. “I was in the mood for cake rolls, so I asked the young fella behind the counter in a bakery if he had a couple of nice buns for me. Sticky, if possible. And—” His audience’s titters drowned out the rest.

“Oh, man.” Peter wiped his eyes. “I never know whether to believe those crazy language misadventures of yours, Davy!”

“Oh, I can.” Judy spoke up, her eyes on Peter. “I had a similar experience recently in London. The receptionist at the hotel told me it was a little chilly out so I should put on a jumper!”

The girls around them laughed, but Mike was confused. Peter too, by the look of him.

“It’s an old-fashioned frilly little dress you’d wear over a blouse, to church, say,” Judy explained. “So of course I couldn’t work out how a short cotton dress with no sleeves would keep me warm. Turned out it’s their crazy word for a sweater.”

She held out her cup for Peter to refill it, but moved her hand, making Peter have to hold on to it with his free one to keep her steady.

“You were in England?” Davy asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” She took a long drink of soda and found Davy still looking interested when she’d finished. “I went over to Howard Films, just outside London, to bring the Costumes stock back.”

“Gosheroonie.” Micky looked at Peter as he spoke. “Sounds like a really responsible job you have there.” _Think of all the things that kind of salary could buy_ , his waggling eyebrows said. Mike stood on his toes for him.

“You’d think so, but not really. Sending someone was quicker and cheaper than having it freighted, and they only got me to do it because no one else with a passport was free to go at such short notice, as my dear co-workers delighted in telling me.” Judy stood, all affability gone. “Did you say there was a sundeck?” she asked, directing her words at Peter.

“Yes. Out there.” He pointed then winced. Mike caught the tail end of Micky’s kick to Peter’s ankle. “Would you like… I mean, I’ll take you. Show you. It.”

“That way.” Micky helped them set off. “Big Peter’s got a case of the Valeries again,” he sighed. “Still, we’ll all help, right?”

“We—” Mike took a deep breath. “Shouldn’t all clump together. Should circulate.”

“Calm down.” Davy fanned Mike’s face for him with a napkin. “We don’t have to be so precious about entertaining, you know. We’re not at Joannie Jans’ mansion now. Joannie Edwards, I should say.”

“You know her?” squealed the summer-neighbor girl, and with a, “ _Know_ her? We’re like _that_!” Davy steered her away.

Peter was behaving like he had over Valerie, Micky had said. Peter had had the _hugest_ crush on that chick. Did that mean he had one on Judy? Valerie was no longer around. She’d moved away, or been moved away, by her mother, and Mike didn’t think their relationship, whatever it had been, had survived the distance. But Judy was right here. Or, in point of fact, right out there. With Peter, presumably watching the sun set while leaning on the railing of the deck, something Mike liked to do. With Peter.

Well, too bad what Mike liked. Right? Tough luck. Those were the breaks. He should let Peter live his life and get on with his own. Starting right now. He forced himself to smile back at Lorri, make small talk, get to know her, rather than snatch Judy’s cardigan jacket from the coat stand and take it out to her on the deck, after she’d said she wanted it, and it might be cold out there. Might be chilly, even, like in London. _Ha ha. Shared laughter._ He had the whole scene rehearsed in his head.

But really, he’d better just see, he told himself a little later. Just check things out, see if Peter was doing okay. Or if necessary, help him, like Mick had said. Well, they weren’t making out. And weren’t likely to, with Peter deep into the improvised jam session there with some folkie friends.

It seemed Judy wasn’t into folk music, if the way she had her feet on the stool she was perching on, her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms around them was any clue.

“Oh, not the bleeding banjo!” Davy’s muttered lament behind Mike caught him by surprise. “Birds and banjos don’t bloody blend.”

Mike was too impressed by Davy’s alliterative skills to reply—or stop him sauntering into the midst of the huddle, capturing everyone’s attention and waxing lyrical about the light and the sound and the sights down on the beach right then, and, arm around his chick, saying they should go down and be at one with the waves.

“Is this the new ‘go watch the submarine races’?” sighed a girl Micky was trying to line up.

It made Mike laugh, remembering how the Texas equivalent, with that state having fewer large bodies of water handy than California, was goin’ out to spot nine-banded, ghost-faced ocelots. At least submarines existed, even if they were unlikely to be racing where couples parked waterside to neck.

Judy still didn’t crack much of a smile, but jumped down to follow where Davy was leading his chick and dragging Peter down the steps. Which was when Toby arrived, having taken a short cut down the beach to come _up_ the steps, and caught Davy. Seemingly a little loaded, Toby also seemed to think she was still dating Davy, and things got real hilarious real quick.

 _That should make Judy’s face stop looking like a slapped ass,_ Mike thought, then squirmed, thinking of smacking one ass in particular. He hadn’t realized he had that tendency—well, not to that degree, but something about Peter brought it out in him. And no, it didn’t take the sour look off Judy’s mug. Nor did Davy being called a pint-sized playboy, a tiny tomcat, and a pocket philanderer—although Mike did see where Davy’s recent alliterative skill must have come from; from hanging out with Toby, whose profession led her to see the world in subheadings and epithets, which tended to rhyme or alliterate.

Mike, peering from the deck as someone should stay in the pad to be in charge, felt Judy didn’t look much more cheerful during the inevitable ‘jumping from the rocks to the sand’ contest, nor when Peter was pressed to do his ‘climbing the rocks and falling’ routine—falling all of a foot. Okay, it was funnier when high, Mike would admit.

The later it got, the fewer people remained, until it looked like coupling-up time. Copping off, Davy called it. As if his thought had activated him, Mike saw Davy give Peter a discreet—for him—signal and slink out of the stained-glass doors, Peter following.

 _I’m just seeing if I need to help with anything_ , Mike told himself, slipping out to the deck as soon as he could and leaning to hear.

“So I’ll need the room,” Davy was saying. “You can go back to hers, right?”

“ _Ahem._ ”

“ _Judy._ ” Peter reached out for her arm when she arrived in their midst. “Sorry. That—”

“Was a _little_ premature.”

Mike felt her glare from a few feet away.

“I share with a roommate. And actually my brother’s arriving to give me a ride home right about now.”

And for the first time all evening, she stalked away from Peter, who, still apologizing, hurried after her.

“So you’ll be all right on the couch, then?” Davy called after him.

When Mike got back inside, Peter had reached the door, presumably to see Judy off. Mike grabbed Judy’s cardigan sweater from where it was still on the coat stand and with a, “Hey, Peter, think fast!” balled it up and lobbed it to him. Catching it, Peter mouthed his thanks.

Everyone over the age of thirty had left by then, and Mike, mood lighter, stopped by the equally inevitable table game, namely Twenty Plus One, Burbank Variation, with its crazy rules and drinking forfeits. Peter didn’t join them and, on a hunch, Mike headed back to the deck. He was right: Peter had rejoined Davy around the side of the pad. And he was right about something else: Peter did seem to be seeking Davy’s advice.

“So, if you’ve given it your best shots, and still bugger all, maybe it’s time to forget it, mate.” Davy rubbed Peter’s shoulder. “Move on, you know?”

 _Valerie. Judy._ Mike bit his lip.

“I…dunno. Even if nothing comes of it, I have to be true to my feelings, you dig?” Peter tried to explain. “Not just…”

“ _Mike!_ ”

He couldn’t ignore Mick’s cry, even if was just to adjudicate at Wild Quarters, San Fernando Valley rules, centering on dares and kissing. As soon as he could, when things had wound down, he escaped to bed, his heart and head full. Okay, so Peter wasn’t putting the moves on Judy right away, but still Mike couldn’t do anything. Sure, he could discover if Peter dug guys, but the four of them were still a unit, a group, all with their places, their roles.

Micky, crashing into their room, swaying on his feet, a beatific grin and several lipstick prints on his face, a half-eaten string of popcorn around his neck, drew Mike from his funk. “Mick…that’s not your shirt! And you weren’t even wearing socks earlier? And where’re your pants?”

“Details.” Mick waved an unsteady hand, then stared. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. Much. Just feeling…” _Lonely. Alone._ The beer he'd drunk spoke for him before he could. “Could I…have a loan of your Ted? Just for tonight?”

“C’n do better ‘n’ that.” Micky lay down and flipped back his sheet. He patted his bed. “Cuddle?”

 _Woah._ And yet… Not knowing how he felt about this, Mike climbed hesitantly in behind him.

“Whyd’you always get tobe big spoon?” Micky griped.

“Shuddup, nutjob.” Mike hugged him tight, above the waist of his boxers, under the not-his shirt, pressing into his warmth. Yeah, much better than a teddy bear. He nuzzled into Micky’s neck and bit off a popcorn, making Micky snuffle-giggle.

Him taking comfort from Micky? This was different to their usual, well, roles, and yet, seemed…okay. Was their group dynamic more flexible than Mike had assumed?  Snuggling Micky harder, his head buzzing with what this understanding could mean for him and Peter, Mike fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would love any feedback, especially if you think this is moving too slowly/ is too samey. Thanks in advance.


	9. Chapter Nine

Mike’s dreams were hot and sensual, and he woke up hard, his hand on his dick. His muscles gathered and bunched to roll him into the warm body at his side, in that half-second before realization dawned. _Micky’s bed. Micky._ Thank fuck the guy slept like a dead log.

Again Mike thought how much simpler things would be if he and Mick got it on, how convenient, when neither of them had other options. It’d save Mick chasing over half LA for chicks and leave him more time and energy for rehearsing and hunting for gigs, for one thing. And copping some easy early morning ass would put Mike in a better mood for the day, for another. Yeah, be real handy—in a different world, where they were different people who could turn it on and off like that.

Because in this world, now, Mike was turned on to Peter, and his heart beat that little bit faster when he remembered the conversation he’d snooped on: Peter wasn’t gonna be making a move on Judy, at least not right away. He was ignoring Davy’s suggestion to rebound quickly from Valerie to her, anyway, which gave Mike a chance to slide…his own advice in.

And there was no time like now. Well, when his morning woody eased off. He’d have assumed Micky almost naked in bed next to him made him harder, but Micky, hair crazy from the pillow, lipstick smudged all over his face, popcorn stuck in clumps to his torso and the bed, now nude except for the socks that weren’t his, had Mike shaking with silent laughter, the urge to rub out a quick one gone.

He got up before the bed rocking woke Micky and sniggered harder on his way back from the john to see Micky now wore the few bits of popcorn remaining on their string across his forehead, like a coronet. Mike even spent a few minutes hunting down the Instamatic camera, to get a picture. Or two. He hoped they’d turn out. Those white bobby socks frilling on Micky’s thin ankles just pulled the whole look together.

On his way out, Mike couldn’t resist opening the window and leaving a popcorn trail from the windowsill across the room to Micky’s bed. Poor gulls deserved a snack and if they came in to feast, it should be an interesting wakeup for Mick. It made Mike snigger, anyway.

Peter’s wetsuit and surfboard were gone from their place around the side and, peering through the telescope, Mike could just about make out Peter, in the waves. He went to fix a thermos of coffee to go with the one of tea Peter had taken, if the heat of the kettle was anything to go by, and got the most breakfast-like leftovers together, figuring Peter wouldn’t have. He’d just have grabbed a piece of whatever fruit he could find.

He was glad to get out of the pad, with its current exploded-bomb look, and down on the relative calm and quiet of the Sunday morning beach. It wouldn’t stay like that for long, not now summer had officially started. It didn’t take Mike long to find Peter’s towel, secured to the sand by the rocks Peter took to and from the beach for that purpose. Micky ribbed him about him, saying the beach was full of stones. “But not these ones,” Peter had said. And he had a point: they did make identifying Pete’s stuff easier.

Mike had planned to go in, swim, but Peter came out before Mike had taken a few steps, so Mike shook out his towel and lay down, watching him approach, seeing his smile grow bigger as he neared. _Like that cat in that old English story._ Mike narrowed his eyes, trying to recall it, then gave up.

“Morning.” Peter set down his bright orange board, taking care not to drip on Mike.

“Yeah.” Mike passed Peter his towel to blot his face and hair. “Want me to—” he said at the same time as Peter asked, “Could you—” and they both laughed.

Peter kneeled for Mike to start on the zip of his wetsuit for him. It tended to catch at the top and Peter couldn’t do it easily from his angle. Peter brought his hand up after a few seconds, his tan skin contrasting with Mike’s pale one and the black of the suit, and Mike dropped his as if burned before their fingers made contact, thinking he must have lingered too long or looked too hard and made Peter uncomfortable. But Peter’s chest, revealed as he peeled off, was as hard to resist as his eyes were. _Eyes and eyelashes_ , Mike amended. When they were spikey and longer with water droplets, before Peter finished toweling his hair and face.

“What?” Peter must have felt Mike’s eyes on him.

“Nothin’. Just, I see it now.” Mike pointed at Peter’s wet-sand-colored hair swept back from his face, the look making his sideburns more prominent. “That you do look a little like that friend of yours. The one people say is your twin.” He wasn’t at all, if for no other reason than no one had eyes like Peter’s, eyes that went from brown to tawny in the light and which glinted with flecks of amber in the sun.

“Oh.” Peter shook his head, settling his bangs that were already drying to an LA-beach-sand shade. He patted his bare chest dry and sat back, his wetsuit-clad legs stretched out. “Were you going in? The waves are good.”

“In a little bit. Just, with the mess back there, felt like havin’ breakfast outside.” Mike took the bag from behind him. “Al fresco, you dig?”

“Really? Well, I hope it’s more than _pane e acqua_.”

“Bread and water?” It was near enough to the Spanish for Texas-born-and-bred Mike to guess the meaning. “Why would it be just bread and water?” he asked, trying to understand how Peter’s mind worked.

“Oh, _al fresco_ in Italian means in the cooler, as in, in jail,” Peter explained.

Mike laughed, fascinated as always by the layers that made up Peter and the way he saw the world. “Man’s drink?” he asked, imitating some schtick Micky did, offering Peter coffee from his thermos.

“Hippie’s drink?” Peter countered, offering Mike some of his tea.

Mike took it, wanting to surprise Peter. He drank, then smacked his lips together and licked them. “Tastes like cough drops,” he said after some thought.

Peter grinned, topaz lights gleaming in his eyes. “It’s aniseed,” he explained. “But yeah, this coffee’s better, this morning.” He held out his cup for a refill and Mike curled his fingers around Peter’s wrist, to steady it, reminding himself of Judy, last night.

“You sleep on the couch?” he asked.

Peter shook his head. “Hammock.”

“Huh. Davy got some then.” Mike poured himself coffee. “Well, when doesn’t he?”

“Some…but not all. She left early enough that it could be called getting home really late.”

Mike nodded. He was hip to that. The chick had seemed young. He placed the remains of the Jell-O fruit salad between him and Peter and handed him a hard sugar cookie to use to scoop the dessert from its plastic dish. Peter bent to his task, his bangs loosening as they dried, and already showing a couple of topaz streaks. His hair would be getting summer-lighter soon.

“Summer,” Peter echoed.

Mike sure as hell hoped Peter couldn’t read any of his other thoughts. _Guitars,_ he tried. _Cars. Girls._

“Meaning Burgers and Bowling on the Beach.” Peter indicated the expanse of sand, already filling a little.

“What? We’re not doing that anymore!” Mike scoffed.

Peter swapped his cookie to his left hand and drew a wavy line in the sand with his now-free right. “It wasn’t so long ago we were thankful to play the shacks along the beach.” He added a long straight line to his map, to indicate the pier sticking out into the ocean, and then dots just back from the waves, to represent the beach businesses.

Mike didn’t even question how he understood the drawing. “I know. And play for just pocket money or even food. But, you know, that was before our masterplan went into operation.”

“Upward and onward.” Peter added more dots to his map, marking Beechwood, then Downtown, Mid-City, and away along the Boulevard to West Hollywood and the Strip.

“Told ya.” Mike could afford to be smug, what with their recent week’s residency at The Trip near the Strip, that they’d leveraged into a try-out at the Duke Box, _on_ the Strip, this week. He crunched his cookie and nudged the plastic bowl of dessert-breakfast nearer to Peter, for him to eat his share.

“You did. And you were right. It’s happening. No; that’s wrong.” Peter looked at him, really looked, holding his gaze. “It’s you. You’re making it happen. Your vision, your energy.”

“We’re all working toward it. All focused on it.” The endless hours of song writing, song crafting and rehearsals, the untold time spent on the band’s image, the never-ending searching for gigs, venues, events, the nonstop drive to get their name out there—Mike saw the acknowledgment in Peter’s eyes. “Might be my vision, but it’s our spirit.”

“Our vibe.”

The purr in his voice as he said that made Mike want to arch his back, as though he were the cat. “Yeah, well.” He coughed. A thought struck him. “Did you tell people? At the party? Even though we haven’t arranged to play there this summer?”

Peter shrugged. “It’s traditional! Opening week gathering of the newcomers and holiday makers for late lunch that stretches into early dinner there?”

“Well, I guess we’ll still get a free meal or two out of it, for driving custom there.” Mike was philosophical.

He kind of hoped the beach would stay this quiet, leave him and Pete in their cocoon, one where Peter leaned over to Mike’s towel to take the last cookie, bringing him near enough for Mike to detect the aniseed tea on his breath and see the kiss of cinnamon freckles on his face. He felt wrapped in the shush of the surf and the salt of the sea, held between the hard-softness of the sand under him and the growing warmth of the sun above and soothed by the blue and white of the sky. And being there with Peter, sharing it with him, made it all so much better.

That peace and privacy couldn’t last, and it wasn’t, not with a beach volleyball game already starting up, right before Mike was preparing to bring up the subject, to mention the conversation he’d…accidentally overhead…at the party. No chance now, not with people beckoning and calling them and Peter needing him to tug his wetsuit off.

“So, you didn’t go Scotsman-style today either?” Mike couldn’t resist quipping, even though it tortured him.

“God, no! Do you have any idea how wet rubber molds and sticks to warm skin?” Peter’s answer told Mike he knew nothing about words-as-torture, but that Peter did.

But the pick-up volleyball game, with each side growing in numbers as people came along, was fun. The teams got so big that anyone who fumbled had to leave the pitch, not allowed in again until another player fouled up and had to sit out. Mike missed a shot, trying not to get caught eyeing Peter, and accepted the jeers and groans.

“Where’s Micky?” lamented a guy when Mike walked to the side lines.

“Officially sloppy.” Mike grinned at the memory.

Peter laughed, then stood still and waved, and the sun kinda dipped a little. Even without turning, Mike knew, just knew, who he’d see behind him.

“Hey, Judy.” He put a question into his tone. Because, why?

Peter ran over and held up a hand to tag Judy into the game, like everyone else who'd arrived, but she just stood there in new-looking beachwear, looking a little confused.

“I went to your house and couldn’t get in.” Both her voice and tone were indignant. “Though I heard water running.”

“Davy in the bathroom,” Mike and Peter said together.

“Did we arrange…” Peter looked confused.

“I thought I’d come help clean-up.” Judy cut him off.

“Oh, later. Or tomorrow. You see, there’s lunch—”

“Oh.” Judy nodded. “Yes, I’d like to take you to lunch. All four of you. To say thanks for inviting me to your party.”

She hadn’t quite got the “exchange” idea she’d claimed to be so fascinated by.

“Somewhere nice. Downtown? Or even out farther—there’s a good place off Melrose.”

Now Mike was confused. Judy stood stiffly, not really looking as though she got a kick from the beach and wanted to hang out more. “We got plans,” he said. “Burgers and bowling plans. A local tradition for the beach season. It’s a whole scene.”

“Hey, you should come along,” Peter urged her. “Everybody else is.”

Even Micky would have winced at that. And again, joining the group didn’t seem to be what flipped this chick, but she agreed, and when Mike said they had to change and wake Micky, she walked back to the pad with them. Or rather, with Peter, close to his side. Davy would have been coughing to get Peter’s attention, then, when Peter looked, mimed putting an arm around her shoulders. Mike didn’t. He fell a little behind, as he often did when they walked, enjoying the view, especially when Peter rinsed off under the beach shower.

“Whose turn is it to wake— _Micky?_ ” queried Peter, in the pad, at the noise from the upstairs bedroom.

Crashes and flapping and shouts about _birds_ and _Hitchcock_ reached them. “He’s _off_ his bird,” Davy suggested, emerging from the bathroom. “Oh, hello, Judy.” He looked from her to Peter and then Mike. “Beach burgers?”

Mike nodded and Davy nodded back and headed for his room, followed by Peter, while Mike made for the bathroom to sluice off and, finding his band shirt and pants hanging in there, to change. Waiting for the others, he made a quick round of the doors and windows. The side door wasn’t locked and the key was nowhere in sight, so Mike locked it with the spare on his keyring, ignoring Judy’s tapping fingernails and sighs.

As he turned, Peter was leaving his room, and they both stopped. It was such a simple, everyday thing, but the sight of him in his blue band shirt, the same color Mike was wearing, his hair still damp, his lips curling into a smile—

And just like that, from one breath to the next, Mike _understood_ —or, perhaps more truthfully, _acknowledged_. Whatever. He simply knew, with a bone-deep certainty, that felt as real as a punch to the gut that what he felt wasn't just attraction to Peter, wasn't just wanting him physically or even just grooving on him as a person _._ And this knowledge throbbed within him, as strong as his heartbeat. _It’s him. The all of him. He’s for me. He’s mine._ Understanding plus knowledge turned into conviction. _Tell him._ _Now._ His body formed an action plan, took a half-step forward—

Then Judy moved, getting between them, blocking Mike from Peter’s light and warmth, and he shivered, unease rippling down his spine.

 

 


	10. Chapter Ten

“Mike?” Micky caught him as Mike stumbled down the wooden sundeck steps past him, not really seeing him. “Wait up.”

Mike was hardly rushing. He’d been surprised and grateful he could move, after finally growing the balls to admit, albeit to himself, his true feelings for his best friend. His best guy friend. Funny, he’d have thought realizing something like that would have knocked him as flat as a rodeo clown in front of the bucking chute when the bull was released, but no. That wasn’t the feeling at all. How did it feel? Well, like he now carried something precious, something priceless, inside him, and he had to adjust to its weight and its presence. Its _existence_.

And adjusting made him slow and ponderous, last man out and taking a while to double-check the sundeck door was locked, to where he now waited on the beach, registering Micky was leaning against him to unlace and slip off his shoes. Mick never could walk well on sand in footwear.

“I forgot we were walking this way.” Micky attempted to knot the laces together.

Mike sucked in a deep, jagged breath and brought things—the day, the beach, the small crowd up yonder, Peter and Judy ahead with Davy—into focus, made them settle. He’d have to think about what to do, how to proceed—or if to—but he had time. Right now, he was here and had to be present. Especially when it looked like Micky needed him. He took the ends of the laces and fastened them into a knot for Micky to sling the tied-together shoes around his neck, getting a muttered, “Thanks,” in exchange.

Micky didn’t seem to notice anything different or strange about Mike, so he must be coping okay with his world having turned upside down on him. He paused, letting the significance, the weightiness of it settle further. He cleared his throat, just to make sure he could still control his speech, that the knowledge wouldn’t burst from him. Because finding the exact right time to share it, to hand it over—that was a whole other next step.

 “You okay? You’re…quiet. Apart from all that squawking when you had a nightmare, earlier.” Mike made himself try words. “Wait. Should that be daymare?”

“That was no dream!” Micky tried to stamp a bare foot. “There were birds—gulls—all over the room and pecking at me! I was Hitchcocked!”

“Whose cock?” Davy swung around, sniggering.

“Maybe you should say you were Daphned?” Peter suggested.

“What? Never mind.” Micky shook his head, his usual response when Peter said something out of left field. Micky wasn’t like Mike, curious about how Peter’s brain seized on and cataloged things. The motion made Mick wince a little. “Banged my head,” he explained and angled it for Mike to feel the lump on the back.

“ _Micky!_ ” Mike tried to recall the signs of concussion and how long to monitor for after a head injury. “What happened?”

“Well, gee, the floor came up awfully fast and hard, see.”

“It can do that.” Mike squinted into Mick’s eyes, assessing the size of the pupils and testing if Micky could move his eyes to follow his finger. No point asking him about headache or nausea or tiredness, with Mick being hungover. He’d keep an eye on him over lunch and over the next couple of days for any delayed symptoms. “Especially during drunken games of Kiss or Dare, Van Nuys variant, right? Any point asking if you have amnesia?”

“You know, I just can’t remember.” Micky didn’t miss a beat.

“What’s the last thing you do remember?”

“Falling out of the hammock.” He mimed hitting the floor.

“Right. Not anything after, like…going to bed?” Mike was sorta glad about that, that Micky didn’t seem to recall Mike had gone to him for comfort last night. He’d been prepared to have to admit it, deal with it, but— “Stay hydrated,” he advised. “There’s aspirin back at the pad. Take some later, if you didn’t already.”

 _Cluck cluck._ He’d accused Micky of squawking, but he was mother hen Mike.

“Glad we’re not actually playing at Barney’s.” Micky squinted at the sun and Mike pointed to Micky’s sun shades, hanging from the gap of his eight-buttoned shirt, for Mick to put them on.

“So why are you in your stage costumes, then?”

Judy’s called-over question poked at Mike. “Well, it’s part of the band’s image,” he began, catching up with her and Peter.

“Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees!” Toby threw in, from the middle of the group just ahead of them, pointing at the four of them.

“Yeah, like marketing.” Mike shrugged. “And, well, band uniformity, I guess. We sometimes all go out together in our band clothes.”

Peter laughed. “Usually at the end of every two weeks. Right before laundry day rolls around.”

“But you hardly play country and western music, do you?” Judy continued. “So why those costumes? Oh, did _you_ design them? Because the bib-style is western wear, isn’t it, coming from cowboys?”

“Really?” Davy asked.

“Well, via early settlers. They wore them as work shirts. But really, they’re derived from Civil War battle shirts.”

“ _Really?_ ” Peter this time asked her.

“I just liked the look of the buttons and stuff,” Mike muttered.

“It’s che—charming. In its own way.”

Mike glared. He reckoned he knew what Judy had been going to say. Was their bandwear cheesy? “We like the shirts,” he said, hating how defensive his tone sounded. “They’re comfortable to play in.”

Judy rubbed the fabric of Peter’s shirt between her fingers and thumb, ruffling it from his pants to do so. “I see,” she said.

“Oh, come on. I’m starving.” Davy pushed between Peter and Judy, making her drop her hand, and making them all pick up the pace.

She must have studied fashion, or clothes, Mike supposed, to do her job. Maybe he should talk to her about styles, or trends, or whatever. He shouldn’t automatically dislike her because she, well, liked Peter. Except…that feeling he got from her. It was… _Something._ He filed it away, to examine later—his usual habit—because they were at Barney’s, and getting their usual slaps on the backs and shoulders from the man himself.

“Barney’s Burgers and Bowling on the Beach?” Mike pointed at the new name on the large wooden building, one of the parade right by the sign for the start of the beach, next to the pier. Although Barney kept the place open for coffee and sandwiches off-season, Mike hadn’t been there for a month and hadn’t seen the refit. “What happened to Barney’s Beach Bowlerama from last summer?”

“Oh, Billy here reckoned there’s not enough lanes for a ‘rama’.” Barney mock-scowled at his oldest, busy greeting the large group of arrivals. “And it didn’t mention the burgers.”

“And Barney’s Beach Burgers and Bowling?” Mike recalled the original name.

“This is longer! But might have to change it again…”

Mike wondered what the restless old guy was up to, and doubted he’d have to wait long to find out. “How’s business?”

 “Couple new places opened up along the strand again this year.” He jerked his chin at the new joints along the esplanade here at the end of the beach, or the boardwalk, as Peter called it.

“Ah, but you have the reputation. The history,” Peter replied.

“And even with a new clientele each year, word gets passed along,” Mike assured him. “You’re a local hot-spot.”

“Yeah. And you’re all four comped. On the house with thanks.” Barney clapped Mike and Peter’s shoulders again and beamed them a wide smile. The mass of beach-goers, currently being shown to the diner tables inside the shack and working out who was sitting where, pulled Judy along with them. “Still got the stage space, if you wanna play?”

“Maybe later on in the season.” _Never say never_ , Mike’s look at Peter said. _Old times’ sake._ Peter’s face wore a proud-of-Mike look in reply.

Thinking about that made Mike miss a minute, and why they were being steered along to one side of the café and a new, knocked-through archway

“You bought that space next door?” Peter was asking. “What— _Oh._ ”

 _Oh_ was right. Whatever business the shack alongside had been—fishing tackle and bait shop, Mike thought—it was now… “A midway?” Because it sure reminded him of the space in a county fair where the games booths clustered.

“A games room. Like a penny arcade!” Peter waved at Benny, putting a last touch to one of the two flippers machines, both standing in the back corners of the room, and Bernie, calibrating a sharpshooter game along the far wall.

“Here. Knock yourselves out. On the house.” Barney trickled half a handful of plastic tokens into Mike’s palm and half into Peter’s and, with a final clap on Mike’s back, swung back into the body of his establishment.

“Foosball!” Mike exclaimed, as Peter cried, “Babyfoot!” and they both leaped for the table football.

“Blue!” Mike called and they raced around the table to change sides, where Mike slammed in a token to release a small plastic ball.

“This should be a hit when the crowds get tired of bowling,” Peter predicted, indicating the other table footballs set-ups and what looked like a basketball game under a dome in the middle of the room.

“You jawin’ or playin’?” Mike drawled, slamming his five-bar rod to position his line of players to get first touch on the little white ball in the center circle

“Well, you’re cheatin’!” Peter observed. “And so early on!”

“Oh, fightin’ talk!” Mike yanked on his three-bar, pushing it to the far wall, preparatory to going for a pull shot at goal. Success. And there, then, everything was so right, so summer-normal, so _them_ that words formed and left Mike’s mouth before he was aware of them. “Hey, I kinda heard what you and Davy were saying, last night. When you were outside?”

Peter paused, just for a moment, but it was there. “Uh-huh?”

“About, well, not rushing into things. Or on to things.” Mike pinned the ball against the wall of the table, dulling its impact, before flicking it from his five to his three-bar. “Giving things a chance, I mean.”

“And?”

At the note in Peter’s voice, one Mike couldn’t define, he fumbled, losing possession of the ball. “And I agree. It’s important to— What I mean is, sometimes, you can’t just rush ahead. You might want to, but you gotta take things slowly. Or let things take themselves slowly. If that’s how they are.”

The game had stopped, their palms stilled on the handles, the plastic players motionless and the ball ignored because he and Peter were staring at each other, not the table. “They work themselves out. If—when they’re ready. I don’t…” Mike managed a one-shouldered shrug. What more could he say? He had no idea how things stood with Peter and…anyone. “Falling into something, some new, well, relationship, I guess is the word, too quickly…it’s not always right. Even if you want it to be.”

“Yes? Really? You… Wait.” And Peter flicked his player just so to bounce the ball off the wall just right for a goal. When he looked up, he wore the hugest grin. “So we’re…on a equal footing?”

Mike gave a slow nod. They weren’t referring to the stupid game. he understood that, and just hoped that the other thing they were talking about was the same thing. A burst of noise, cheers and applause, came from the café. “Better get back.” In fact, he was surprised they’d had that much time on their own.

“Yes.” Peter took a step and turned around. “Mike.”

“Uh-huh, good buddy?”

“I do understand. I really do. That things take the time they take. I’m just pleased you…see that.”

He resumed his journey, and damn if Mike didn’t think Peter’s hips were swinging and his ass bouncing even more than usual. He was glad of the hubbub of the diner, the cross-currents of talk and jokes, people coming and going from the bowling alley and jukebox, food being delivered, people’s news to get up on, the owners to catch up with, to occupy his thoughts.

“Michael.” Toby wandered by the booth Mike sat at the end of, plumped herself down on his knee and grabbed at his shoulders for balance.

“You’re very formal.”

“Well, it’s Sunday!” Toby waved a hand at the platters of fries and the din, a far cry from roast meat lunch and church with relatives. “Listen. Could you make out with me later, at the rocks? So Eddy can catch us? He wasn’t jealous of Davy.”

Mike worked through her logic. “Oh, Toby, man! I’m… I’d rather not. Nothing against you. Hey, you know who would? Mick.” _Probably._

“I went to ask him but he just bugged out.” She pointed at the door. “Not like him to book it. Guess he was a little unglued.”

 _Damn._ Guilt swamped Mike. He hadn’t kept an eye on Micky as he’d promised himself he would after failing to see he’d been off last night. “Yeah, he’s not together today. I’d better go make sure he’s not too zapped.” He stood, tipping Toby to the floor and righting her. “Try asking Peter for help. Do it right now,” he said, a little maliciously as his parting shot, indicating Peter through the crush at another table with, yep, Judy crowding him.

Mike confirmed with Barney that Mick had just left, lunchless, and took a wrapped burger for him for later. Outside, he peered into the distance, guessing Micky had gone home via the sidewalk rather than the beach. Yes and he’d borrowed Benji’s roller skates, was speeding home quick.

“Brad, gimme a loan of your board there?” Mike pointed at the kid’s skateboard. “You can come get it later.”

Despite it, he didn’t catch up with Micky, but reckoned he wasn’t far behind, especially when he saw the front door to the pad open. He froze at the shouts coming from within, then almost tripped, hopping off the board, to shoot inside.

“Who the hell— What the hell?” Micky still had the skates on his feet and stumbled and skidded across the messy living room.

“Mick, what’s going on?”

“Mike? Look!” Micky skated, barely missing the couch, to the side door. “Burglars! Thieves, or whatever. Just now, here!”

“Siddown.” Mike swiped plates off a chair and pushed Micky onto it. “Stay right there and don’t move.” The table in front of the stained-glass door was shoved to one side, and the door itself gaped open. Mike rushed to it, but there was no one there. He turned back to Micky, pale, shaking Micky, who was babbling about an intruder. Or two. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Look again!” Micky ordered, pulling and tugging at the straps to his roller skates.

So Mike did, wanting to put Mick’s mind at rest. He still didn’t see any figure in the vicinity, but what he did see, however, was a key glinting on the ground. The key he hadn’t been able to find earlier, making him use his own to lock the side door. And lock it he had. So what the hell was going on?


	11. Chapter Eleven

Whatever was going on, he had Micky to take care of first. He picked up the key and backed into the room, locking the door after him and leaving the key in the lock, its usual place, then elbowing the small table in front of the stained-glass door.

“I really don’t see anyone, babe,” he assured Micky, helping him remove his roller skates. “And you do realize you’re still wearing your sunglasses there? Kinda hard to make out stuff indoors with shades on, _and_ while on skates _and_ while hungover, right?

Micky removed them to glare at him. “There was someone in here,” he insisted. “A guy, I think. In dark clothes!”

“Hmm.” Mike glanced around. “Well, seems you scared him off—look, instruments are still here, TV… Either you or seeing this mess and a half in the pad. So no harm done.”

“Did we leave a door unlocked?” Mick rubbed his head.

 _No._ “Could be. With all the muddle, the chaos… Hey. You doing okay?”

Micky shook his head, then grimaced. “I gotta stop doing that. Nah. Not really.” He could hardly sit upright.

“C’mon. Let’s get you to bed.” Mike helped him stand. “You could have a concussion,” he admitted.

“Oh, and so you think I imagined seeing someone breaking into the house? _Man._ ” Micky made a grab for the bannister as Mike supported him up the spiral stairs. “You’d think a hallucination would be, I don’t know, us winning a Grammy and the award presented by a stacked blonde in a one-piece bikini.”

“Leopard skin?” Mike opened the bedroom door.

“F’choice, yeah. But Mike, I know what I saw. Okay, thought I saw.”

“Well, whatever, but what say we don’t mention it to Davy and Pete?” Mike helped Micky sit on the chair while he picked up the room. “Not worry them, you know? You know how Pete can get.” That wasn’t the reason he wanted this kept quiet, but he wasn’t sure of his real motives. “Jeez, these sheets!” He stripped Mick’s sheets from his bed, then, realizing they didn’t have clean ones, put them back on the other way around, the soiled part at the bottom of the bed, and turned his pillowcase inside out for him too. “Clean your lipstick off before you get into bed next time, pig. Don’t you know you should never sleep in your makeup?”

“Yeah, and the imaginary birds left me a few presents …” Micky indicated the worst of the smears.

“Ah. Okay. Confession time. There might have been a flock of gulls came in after I sorta opened the window to get the popcorn cleaned up.” Mike left Micky to undress, get into bed and figure that out while he ran downstairs for water, cold drink and aspirin. He ripped off a huge sheet of the butcher paper they used for messages—smaller pieces of paper tended to get lost in the life of the pad—and scrawled a note asking the others to keep it down if possible; Micky wasn’t feeling too good and Mike was up there with him too.

Back upstairs, he nudged Micky into bed and used the washcloth from the en-suite to wipe Micky’s face and temples. Micky swallowed the pain meds with the water, downing almost the entire jug. “I’ll be back,” Mike promised, taking the now-full trash basket downstairs to empty, and hunt for their medical dictionary.

Back in their room, reading the section on concussion to check its symptoms made him bite back a chuckle. “Problems thinking straight? Unusual behaviour? Man, how would we tell? Mick, do you have double vision?”

“Hey, when did you get a twin? And which one of you said that?” Micky deadpanned.

“What? I’m about the only one of us who hasn’t,” Mike protested.

Micky shivered, as he tended to when the subject of his low-life lookalike came up, and Mike tapped the page. “Chills ain’t supposed to be a symptom,” he observed.

“So come warm me up, nurse. Body heat and all that?”

“Hmm, depends. You nekkid under there?”

“You wish.”

“I _really_ don’t.”

Micky flicked back the sheet, showing Mike he was wearing boxer-briefs. His pug-puppy-dog face said he wouldn’t be averse to a cuddle. Mike ignored the catcalls when he stripped to his briefs and pulled on an old tee, prior to getting in with his roommate. “Don’t want you gettin’ overheated,” he explained.

“You’re not _that_ sexy,” Micky quipped.

“Yeah, I am. I’m all that.” Mike ran his fingers through his chest fuzz and licked his bottom lip, making Micky loose that bubble of a giggle Mike liked hearing. It only took Mike holding out a cup of flat cola for Micky to sip, then easing him down to lie alongside Mike, with Mike’s arms looped around him, to get him sleeping. Mike didn’t think there was much wrong with him beyond a hangover and general exhaustion. He’d been running himself ragged lately, with his filming work, rehearsing, playing, and romancing Debra. Or Deanna. D-something-a.

When Micky’s breathing steadied and slowed, Mike slipped into his own bed. A few minutes’ rest wouldn’t hurt, while he unpacked the stuff he’d stored away in his brain until he had time to examine it. Starting with the side door. Okay, the key could have been lying on the walkway and he hadn’t seen it earlier. He’d locked the door—all the doors— before leaving for the beach. He always did if they went out all together. But, maybe, he hadn’t locked it properly or firmly, or could be the lock was worn and not working well—like most of the pad—and it had blown open, pushing the table out of its path? What was that thing Peter quoted: once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever’s remaining must be…something. What? He’d have to ask him—

“Hey, good timing, babe,” Mike greeted Peter as he snuck in, closing the door behind him with quiet care. “I wanted to ask you what you meant. About being Daphned?”

“Oh, that.” Peter sat on Mike’s bed. “Micky okay?”

Mike nodded.

“You take such good care of him. Of all of us. Let me make you feel good, in turn?” Peter shook the bottle of oil in his hand.

“You mean…”

“And you’d be helping me. My homework?”

“Oh.” Warm with surprise, Mike turned over onto his front at Peter’s gesture. He moved over a little so Peter could swing a bent leg over his hips and well, _straddle_ him where he lay facedown. He rippled up for Peter to slide his tee off for him and when a bare arm tugged the garment over his head and naked thighs gripped his waist, he asked, “You took your shirt and shorts off too?”

“I don’t want to get oil on them.”

Of course. Made sense. As it did for Peter to press his thumbs into the dimples just above Mike’s rump, indicting Mike should lift his hips for Peter to slide his jockeys down. Mike was a little surprised that the massage started there, and that, while Pete started off by rubbing small circles into Mike’s flesh with his strong thumbs, his movements soon became a cupping and, yeah, a squeezing. Then Peter eased Mike’s ass cheeks apart and trickled oil onto his cleft, following the trail a second later with his thumbs. Mike almost choked as Peter slid a finger lower, stroking his pucker.

“Woah there, shotgun. That’s not relaxing.” Heated now, Mike reared up to dislodge Peter. “It’s _arousing_ ,” he admitted. “You’d better stop.”

“Oh, Michael. That’s okay.”

Mike turned to sit opposite Peter, and see him as erect as Mike was. _And how._ _Jesus._ He was as big as he’d looked in that damn bunny all-in-one. As big as Mike had guessed he was, for a few months now. “ _Okay?_ ”

“More than okay.”

And the way Peter licked his lips and the light that glinted in his eyes made Mike’s hole flex. “Iffen I didn’t know no better, I’d say you were fixin’ to dick me,” he said, his accent thicker and slower than it had ever been in his youth.

“And you’d be right. Except, I don’t really know what to do.” Peter hung his head, but not before Mike caught a sheen in his eye he thought might have been… _tears_.

“Darlin’!” Mike gathered Peter to him, holding him tight. “Ain’t no big mystery. You just do whatever makes _you_ feel good.”

Peter stretched up and gave the lobe of Mike’s ear the tiniest nip as he breathed, “Even if that’s a good, hard fuck?”

“Wut?” Mike pulled Peter back, cradling his head underneath his smooth hair, to see him peeping up from under his sandy lashes and biting his bottom lip. “That what you dig, babe, getting’ down and dirty? You like a deep, rough pounding?”

Peter moved so he could bite harder on Mike’s ear as he whispered, “ _Yes._ ” In the next heartbeat, he was pulling himself free of Mike’s hold. “But I’d better go.”

“Hey, now.” Mike didn’t get the green light-red-light switches. Didn’t like them, not when he was already working his cock, pumping it harder and fuller, the head deep red and engorged as it emerged between his fisted fingers.

“No, Michael. I have to leave.”

Peter’s expression, the light in his eyes, eyes he had fixed on Mike’s—things clicked suddenly into place for Mike. It was like being handed the key to a puzzle. Peter was goddam kinky! He wanted— A slow smile curved Mike’s mouth. “Oh no, shotgun. You ain’t going anywhere. Because, teasing me like that? That’s not nice. I’ll be punishin’ you for that later. In the meantime, quit teasing and get working.”

Peter’s quickened breathing was all the confirmation Mike needed. He pushed Peter lower, still guiding his head. “Get down there and don’t stop until I say. _Until I come._ ” He almost did when Peter got a hand around his dick and gave the shiny head a long lick, all the time keeping his eyes on Mike. And _Jesus_ , if it wasn’t exactly how Mike had imagined, after seeing Peter suck so eagerly on popsicles and lollipops…only better.

His breath caught as Peter laved him thoroughly. “Don't worry about bitin’ off more than you can chew. Your mouth is a whole lot bigger’n you think.” Mike used the down-home saying to give Peter a second’s warning before forcing his head—and his mouth—lower on Mike’s cock. “Keep looking at me,” he ordered, but when Peter fixed those innocent-seeming taffy-colored eyes on him, his lips stretched around Mike’s dick, Mike groaned loudly.

“Shit— _Micky!_ ” he gasped, peering over at his roommate.

“Oh, he sleeps like a lead dog,” Peter commented. That was some saying Mike had mangled and made his own.

“Peter, you’re a trip.” And that was something Peter said and… “ _Fuck._ Shit. Fucken _balls_.” Mike half-turned and punched the pillow, hard. There was no danger of hitting Peter, because Peter— “This is a fucken dream, isn’t it.”

Peter kneeled over him, naked and hard and out of reach. “I’m afraid so.” He came close, to again whisper his words into Mike’s ear, nuzzling into his neck and searing him to his soul. “So when you look at me downstairs, wearing those tight blue jeans, acting like a…sucker wouldn’t melt in my mouth, we’ll both know how much we both want you to throw me down and make me your bitch.”

“ _Peter!_ ”

Peter’s name on his lips, Mike came, climaxing so hard he felt faint. His head was ringing and he jammed his free hand to his face, thinking his nose must be bleeding.

“Peter’s here? Groovy!” Micky half-sat. “Hey, I didn’t eat lunch. Did you bring me a burger?” He twisted over and threw up, luckily into the wastebasket placed next to his bed, then subsided again and went back to sleep.

Aching and slow, Mike cleaned himself then Micky up, dressed, then propped Micky up to drink more water. “I’ll keep your burger for supper,” he muttered, shoving an empty waste bin into place to replace the soiled one he took downstairs with him, downstairs where Peter was, cleaning up. The sight of him had Mike swallowing, dry-mouthed.

And Peter had been wrong about two things—he was wearing denim shorts and not jeans, and Mike couldn’t look at him. It took him a few minutes to get himself under control, and even then he felt dirty, as though he’d taken advantage of Peter. _More like he took advantage of me_ , he thought mutinously.

“I said, is Micky okay?” Peter had followed him outside to the tap and indicated the bin Mike was swilling out and disinfecting.

“Oh, yeah. Needs some rest.” Mike shrugged. “We can check on him in a little bit. No Davy? Course not, not when there’s clearing up needs doing.”

“Yeah.” Inside, Peter squashed a stack of used paper plates into a trash bag.

“And no Judy?” Mike tried for neutral.

“She had to split. Said she had stuff to do for work tomorrow. Or before work. That she’s gonna be busy for a while. So…” Peter continued, his tone too-casual, “you’re going to start cleaning up?”

The way Peter said it… “You know, I think I’ll work on a song for a while?” Mike took up his twelve-string and fished out his notebook and pencil. Peter resumed his work and Mike found his page. The song was coming slowly, still mostly a poem.

 _I’ve seen you when the sun shines and I’ve seen you when it rains._ He could hear that melody. _I’ve known of all the heartache, and I’ve known of all the pain._ Okay, well…

Peter jumped to reach a forlorn string of popcorn, his shirt riding up, showing his tan stomach…

“I know that I’ve been blind, to not have loved you all this time.” Oh. He hadn’t known he was thinking that, much less going to strum and croon it. Huh. There was baring your soul and then there was serving it up on a silver platter.

“Goddammit!”  Standing, his foot crunched on potato chips ground into the rug. “Give me that dustpan and brush.”

“Here.” Peter grinned. “Would you say that clock’s accurate?”

Mike checked it against this watch. “Near as dammit. Why?” That smile… “Oh, goddam. What was it? No, I can guess. Who had what?”

“I was so close!” Peter tapped a sheet of paper marked off into boxes with names in them. “I said within three minutes of you being in proximity to this mess you’d be cleaning.”

“So who won?” Mike couldn’t get mad.

“With five minutes, Toby.”

The phone rang. “If that’s her, tell he she’s gotta cut me in for half,” Mike ordered.

But it wasn’t her. That it was a woman, Mike could tell by the way Peter twirled the cord around his finger.

“Judy.” Peter sounded surprised when he hung up. “She’s got some time off work. She said she’ll call tomorrow.”

Mike frowned. “I thought you said…” He just didn’t get it. The chick seemed to be into hanging out with them, as if she dug their groove, yet didn’t look as if she did when she was with them. Not like Toby, for instance, who really found their vibe a gas, so different from her upbringing and her work.

Mike gave a savage sweep at stray shards of pretzel on the floor, the broom knocking the No Room door open. He stuck his head inside, and stopped. The clothes rail looked pawed through, as if someone had dug through it, searching… For their tuxedos? Least, they looked rifled, half-off their hangers. Something made him look in the box of accessories. It, too, was a mess, looking stirred up. And swirling through it showed him something he knew to have been in there no longer was—that lone sparkly cufflink was gone. What the hell? Mike frowned, more puzzled than ever and not liking it one little bit.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Mike was still puzzling over things when he got up the next morning, his brain throwing out hypotheses and refuting them to the rhythm of his washing, wiping and clearing of the pad. His thought processes should have been clear: he hadn’t taken a pill to get to sleep although the urge to knock himself out and so avoid any betrayingly vocal dreams had been strong. But he’d needed to hear if Micky upchucked and choked. Sure, Micky seemed better and had gotten up for a bowl of soup in the late evening, but better safe than sorry.

He squatted on his haunches to separate the deposit-return bottles into a box. Funny, Davy had used those exact four words before going to fetch Micky some chicken noodle soup from Pop’s, rather than have Peter make cream of anything at all for the invalid. Mike idly wondered what Davy could feel guilty about that’d led him to be kind to Micky. Davy wasn’t much given to feeling guilt, as a rule. Nah, just that Davy was better at practical help.

Mike stood and stretched, working the stiffness from his lower back. He wouldn’t think about how a massage could help, wouldn’t recall how Peter massaging him, either in real life or his porno-rated erotic dream, had felt. Just as he wasn’t thinking he was getting the pad clean so Judy didn’t have an excuse to come over and help do it. _Like she’d need a pretext._

He forced his mind to ruminate on the new song that was taking shape. “I’ve known you for a long time, but I’ve just begun to care,” he sang and stopped, jotting the line down.  

“I’ve seen you when the sun shines…” He recalled the first time he’d seen Peter, earlyish one Monday morning in line for the four p.m. sign-on for Hoot night at the Troubadour. Not just seen—Mike, recent transplant in LA, had gawped at him, from the top of his blond head to the tips of his tan toes, in disbelief.

After a while, the chaos and noise of the whole thing, the discomfort of the hopeful folkies and folk-rockers—and in particular that bareheaded and barefoot blond guy, carrying his guitar, banjo…and surfboard and sweltering more than the others out in the hot sun of Santa Monica Boulevard…because he was wearing a wetsuit—had driven Mike to storm in through the fire door and berate the owner for his lack of consideration and his beyond crappy organization…and wind up acting as host of the evening himself.

Peter had gotten on the list and played, but hadn’t been discovered by any agents or record executives who might have happened to be in the audience, Monday night being industry night. Would Mike have been, had he played? He ‘d never know. But he had met Peter, and Micky and Davy—Micky first, he remembered—all on the same evening, and the Monkees had been borne from there. He still hoped Peter hadn’t noticed Mike glaring at him in the line, or had forgotten or forgiven if he did.

“You made a look of love from just an icy stare,” he found himself singing, then wished he hadn’t when the image conjured up Judy and her disdainful expression. At Barney’s, she looked as if she’d had a bad smell under her nose—until she’d happened to notice Mike watching, when she’d sorta snapped to and stretched her mouth into a brittle smile. A rap on the half-open front door thankfully wasn’t the icy blonde, but their cheerful mailman.

“Whoo-wee.”

Mike acknowledged Bobby’s low whistle on seeing the still not completely back to normal pad.

“ _Now_ I get the banner.” Bobby jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Oh yeah.” Mike took the letters from Bobby with a thanks—bill, circular, bill, postcard—and followed him out to unhook the sign they’d put up to tell guests where the party was at. The subject of the Ditto’ed notice, something about the longer opening hours of local businesses at the Beechwood strip mall in the summer season, caught up to him and he took up the duplicated paper from where he’d just put the mail down, sniffing its fuzzy purple print.

“Say, Bobby, seen this? About changes in the neighborhood these summer months. Because of visitors and what have you?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Visitors…so just wondering if you heard anything, about…say, strangers hanging around?” He didn’t know exactly what he was asking and felt stupid.

“Yeah, always get more sneak thieving in the summer, with holidaymakers wandering up and down to the beach, leaving windows or even their doors open.”

Yeah, logical. North Beechwood, while hardly Venice Beach, did get an influx, even if more of the incomers were relatives of residents, staying with them for a cheap vacation, rather than summer tenants in their own right.

“Same anywhere.” Bobby shrugged and saluted, leaving.

Again, true. So Micky could’ve caught some opportunistic housebreaker in the act, say. Mike pinned the notice to the corkboard and thought he’d mention to the others what Bobby had passed on, reminding them to be more vigilant about locking the pad from now on. Was it a good idea to ask them to keep an eye out for suspicious-looking people? He could see Micky tailing and springing out at surfers who didn’t look or sound right to him, claiming they were in disguise, only to discover they were gremmies or hodads. Could hear Davy scoffing that no self-respecting burglar would bother with their dive.

True, 1334 was hardly one of the big luxury houses like the Willises’ or the Rawlings’, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. “Better safe than sorry.” Mike muttered what seemed to be a mantra, taking a break from clearing up and instead chopping fruit to go with that guinea pig-rations granola they were all eating for breakfast this week. Maybe things were back to normal now. Back to routine. Which included shoving what was left of the mess behind a screen, part of the measures Mike took so they didn’t get distracted during rehearsing.

“Come on, guys!” he urged, when they were flagging in the late afternoon. “Let’s really get into it. Okay, it’s only a party but…” Yeah, his masterplan should’ve had them playing a residency in a club by now.

“Nothing wrong with college parties on the North Campus in Westwood,” Micky opined. “It’s the Arts and Humanities block, which means mostly chicks, and in the case of this party, there for the summer school.”

That cheered Davy up. “So this could lead to them wanting us at sorority evenings?”

Mike just hoped he was referring to them playing on those sorts of occasions as a band. And yeah, playing one such bash usually led to more, with summers just as good as the Christmas season for parties, if you hustled. And Mike had. They all had. One of their first decision had been to do without a manager or agent, to make connections and network to do it all themselves.

“And we should practice for the audition this week,” Peter added.

Mike…kinda wished he hadn’t mentioned it. He was nervous about that. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “So, if you’re okay to go on, Micky?”

Micky rolled his eyes and hit his sticks to count them in. Seemed he was back to normal, or as normal as he ever got, like now, stopping when he realized they hadn’t decided on which song to play next.

“We sound good,” Peter reassured Mike, when they agreed to stop for the day, having plans. “That new song…”

Mike bent low, taking extra care setting down his Gretsch to hide any blush. How to finish Peter’s sentence? _Is a dead giveaway?_ Even now Peter was someone standing beside him, physically and psychologically.

“It’s good to hear you sing one of your songs,” Peter continued, making for the icebox and the cold compresses they kept chilling for after playing.

Even if the whole song was beyond revealing? _And I knew I must try, to win you more than as a friend?_ Well, too late now. It was out there. _Even if I didn’t see it!_ he excused himself to himself. And yet with lyrics like _And you just may be the one_ , how could he have not? What would Peter think of the new-new song he was working on? It played in his head. _The image of you wasn’t clear…guess I’ve been standing too near._ No title yet. _Nearness_? _Closeness_? Nah, the right title would come. He jumped at the loud rap on the door, and a second later, his heart sank, just a little, when he opened it.

“Hi, Judy. Come on in.”

“No, I can’t, I’m—” She gestured over her shoulder. “I’ve been trying to call, like I said I would, but the line was busy all day.” She waved at Peter. “Hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten. So I called-called, as in, ta-da!” She twirled, showing off her blue jeans and shirt tied in a high knot, Mike felt.

“Hey, the phone’s off the hook!” Davy replaced it.

“Well, yeah, for rehearsal,” Mike explained. Okay, he’d taken it off early on, not necessarily because Judy’s promise to call was in his mind… A car horn sounded and Judy waved at someone outside. _Someones._ A car full of—

“ _Girls?_ ”

Davy’s antenna was working even from across the room and he rushed out to see.

“Yes, I’ve been hanging out with some friends, seeing as I’m not working, and you were talking yesterday about Monday B-Movie Madness at the drive-in, and we thought we could all go, all eight of us!” Judy said all in one breath. She waved at her chums again, bouncing where she stood.

“You seem…” Mike started, trying to find the right adjective. _Buzzed? High? Manic?_

“And I feel! I always do when I have time away from work. Come on!” she coaxed. “We can get snacks there too, right? Or do you normally go in your pjs, with a blanky, to get settled down?”

Mike had to smile at that—Micky had in fact done that once, claiming that if kids, brought along by their parents who wanted an evening out, could get away with it, he could too. He hadn’t _quite_ gotten away with it, although he’d had a great time in the kidpit at the front and insisted on getting the free toy too.

“ _Fellas, birds!_ ” Davy called, as discreetly as he could, pointing at the car and the chicks standing and calling.

“Well, I am a movie buff, as you all know, and I do need to see the fine double feature.” Micky was groping for his jacket as he spoke, pulled along by the promise of chicks and Judy’s energetic entreaties. “Real classics— _Terror Creatures From Beyond the Grave_ and _Reptile Mutants Of Planet Terror_.”

“Gee, I wonder what this week’s theme is.” Peter grinned, and Judy tucked her arm through his, her smile wide.

“It’s the same lizard in both flicks. Mike?” Micky jerked his head. “I think that brunette at the wheel has you written all over her. Not literally. That would be crazy. But the way she’s honking the horn in impatience—”

“I…” _Think Judy was replaced by a pod person_ , Mike couldn’t say, despite the current he felt rippling around the pad, emanating from her, as she added her voice to the others, encouraging him, describing her friend Susie, waiting in the driver’s seat of the Chevelle, who—

“Boys?”

The small gang at the doorway parted for Mrs. Purdy, looking from one to another. “Oh, are you…” She joggled the baby carriage she pushed. “Only I wondered…if Peter… Shelly left Henry with me again, and she’s not back yet and I can’t get a hold of her and I can’t call her home or Joe’s office, not really, just in case she’s told him—” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Daughters,” she finished, weakly. “Well, one. It’s enough. Especially when she was a surprise.” She covered her mouth with her other hand.

“Oh, of course!” Peter was already bending over the carriage to scoop out little Henry, their neighbor’s grandson.

“It’s my gin night, you see.” Mrs. Purdy had a hand to her chest now.

Peter blinked. “Don’t you play bridge with your friends on Mondays?”

“Yes,” she replied, looking puzzled at the question.

“Well, it’s—”

“My turn,” Mike interrupted him and swung the baby car around before Peter could get involved. “You shouldn’t change your plans.” _And shouldn’t be here, alone, just you with a cute baby and Judy…_ He knew first-hand how potent the combination of Peter and a helpless infant was. No reason for Judy to experience that too. “I’ll be fine with the li’l tyke. Not my first time.” He nodded as Mrs. P twittered a little, explaining what she’d packed in the bottom of the carriage, and when and how it should be administered.

“And if all else fails, there’s always gin,” quipped Micky. “Dibs on the blonde,” he said out of the side of his mouth to Davy, clarifying his words by adding, “the other blonde. Yonder.”

“Go. I’m fine,” Mike insisted, cutting Peter off again and ignoring his concerned expression. To Micky he added, “It gives you more choice. Do the math. Or ask Davy.” At least they were going to the Sundown, he reflected, and not the Patriot, known as the Passion Pit—no need to tell them they'd better take...galoshes. He bounced the carriage a little as the two cars, after some rearranging of the occupants to make both vehicles co-ed, set off. Mike just hoped they weren’t gonna drag race all the way up to Oakwood. He was glad of the quiet. That swirl of energy, or vibes, or whatever it’d been had been…unsettling.

And as soon as he closed the door, the kid started up. _Peter makes this look easy!_ Mike lamented, feeding, burping, changing, singing to, playing with, and putting music on for the tiny creature, as mutant and alien as anything the others were experiencing elsewhere that night, he was convinced. Henry wouldn’t stop yowling. Maybe he was ill? Mike grabbed the medical dictionary and as soon as he opened the pages and read the word, “Colic,” out loud, Henry, in the crook of Mike’s arm, dropped off to sleep, his bawling purple face now smooth and angelic.

And that reminded Mike of Judy, previously stiff and standoffish, pale and icy, but that evening vibrating on the spot, her face flushed and gleeful. Was there some condition there he could look up? He placed Henry in his carriage and took up the encyclopedia again, slapping it closed as the door opened. He stared. “Monsters get one of ya?”

“Ha.” Micky made for the stairs. “We struck out. I'm still not feeling all that. Going to bed.”

“Huh. I'm not. Going down to the beach just as soon as…” Davy made for the mirror.

“Wait.” Mike gripped the arms of his chair. “Where’s Pete?”

“Headed down there already. Well, him and Judy. Carrying on what they started at the movies. Way they were all night, doubt they saw a frame of the film.” Davy pocketed his comb and winked at Mike. “Not that we saw them—they went right to the back.”

“And you know what _that_ means,” threw in Micky from above.

Mike…did and the image sent cold dread through him. He managed to stand, barely breathing and almost unable to move.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

“Where’re you going?”

Davy’s question stopped Mike in his tracks. Funny, he hadn’t been aware he was moving, but he seemed to be heading for the sundeck door.

“Oh, I’m just…” The motion Mike made in answer to Davy’s question could have illustrated a definition of ‘vague gesture.’ “Gonna take the little tyke home.” _Well done, brain._ He was surprised it was working that well.

“In that case, hadn’t you better take him and his pram with you?” Davy pointed at the two items.

“Oh, well, yes.” Mike backtracked and busied himself making sure the kid was settled in. Still avoiding Davy’s eye, he swung the carriage toward the front door, only for Davy’s “Oi,” to force him around again.

“Mike… Look, just get it together, yeah?”

“What the hell? I _am_ together, man!” That stung Mike on the raw.

“Not the band. Not music or managing. Not stuff like that.” Davy held his gaze. “Other stuff.”

“What in the world are you tryin’ to say?”

“Leave things too long and it could be too late.” Davy, primping—or, as he called it, tarting up, finished—raised an eyebrow and headed out via the sundeck.

“Oh, what is this—” Mike imitated the arched eyebrow gesture to the empty space. “Been practicing that in the mirror? God knows you spend enough time looking in it—you’ll wear the damned thing out!” But calling out comebacks to the deserted living room wasn’t satisfying. What was Davy…he wasn’t referring to returning Henry to his gran’s. _I’ll get him tomorrow and make him spell it out. And in American English, the goddam half-pint Limey,_ Mike vowed.

He locked both doors then hurried along the quiet Beechwood street, trying not to jostle the kid, and kept knocking at the Purdys’ until Mr. Purdy, pajamaed and slippered and harassed-looking, answered.

“Sorry.” Mike sympathized with the guy’s plight, but was firm in his believe that even though Mrs. P. was a little…worse for wear, and that one of her bridge group was staying over, unexpectedly, Mr. Purdy could manage his own grandson.

Mike would have had the little fella staying over on a normal night, for someone to hopefully collect the next morning, but this wasn’t normal. Mike couldn’t really wheel the baby car on the sand of the beach, where he headed next.

He stumbled on Peter and Judy—almost literally—right away, coming up behind them. He thought they’d be down at the make-out rocks at the end of the beach, but they were fairly near the pad, on top of a flat rock not far from where a group sat around a small fire. Mike recognized the blanket from the car trunk. It usually protected Mick’s drums during transit, but now provided the couple with a covering. One, however, that didn’t prevent Mike seeing Peter had his arm around the blonde, was letting her rest her head on his chest as she babbled on. Least they weren’t…doing anything else.

Hating himself, but not enough to make him stop, he eavesdropped, frowning and glaring at the whoops and music coming from the surf dudes around their fire that impeded his listening pleasure.

“So, yeah, I guess I must come off as cold. Then warm then cold again. Giving off mixed signals, they call it, right?”

“It’s understandable. I’m glad you felt you could talk to me about things.”

_Oh, so damn Peter!_

“I wish I could talk to my roommate, you know? But she’s so unsympathetic. Just said, well, he’s gone; he told you to get on with your life, so get on with it! And then, with his first letter from basic training, saying he was sorry he’d told me I should break up with me so I wasn’t hanging on to nothing, because now he needed to feel I’m there, thinking of him waiting for him, but he knew that was selfish so it was up to me… Well, that set the tone for how things are. Confusing, huh?” Judy finished.

“The whole situation is.”

Mike almost wanted to smile, hearing Peter broaden out the issue. The draft, the war—‘confusing’ wasn’t exactly the word. Which was why… He dragged his mind from the secret measures he was taking and strained to hear Judy.

“True. But, well, so that’s why I put on armor, as you put it. A shield. I tell guys who hit on me I have a boyfriend, even though I don’t really know if that’s the case, but it works. Armor—yeah, I feel encased. Or maybe walled off.”

Peter stroked her hair with the hand he had around her.

“And I’m happy to keep guys away, when I’m so confused. But, meeting you…threw me. You’re not like most guys. I knew that as soon as I saw you, and I wanted to… But I feel, well, like I’m betraying him. Or myself. I don’t know how to explain.”

“Can’t you discuss it with him? He must be at advanced training now, right? Did he get leave in between?”

“Eight weeks 70A-10, clerk, at Fort Leonard Wood, called Fort Lost in the Wood, Missouri, after eight weeks’ basic boot camp at Fort Ord, Monterey Bay, known as Fort Crud, due to the cold that gives soldiers there chest infections, yeah. I didn’t get to see him, no. I guess what I’m asking is—and I have no right to—is for, well, patience?”

She propped herself up a little, gazing at him. Mike ducked away in case the change in position meant she glimpsed him. He slunk off backward for a few feet, his eyes still on them. That was a lot to take in, but his immediate thought, bringing with it a drench of relief, was that Judy had taken Peter to the back of the drive-in for a heart-to-heart, not for anything, well, chest to chest, say. Or any skin to skin at all, beyond a shoulder to cry on.

 _At least, that’s what Pete no doubt thinks._ Mike’s steps slowed. He wanted to be sympathetic to someone so mixed-up, but his mind went straight away to the negative. She’d asked for patience—not a friend or a sympathetic ear. Judy, if not rebounding onto Peter, wanted him lined up, in place for when this current long-distance relationship folded! _Or when she folds it._

Peter wouldn’t see it, of course. He was sweet, kind; not the sort to expect a girl to put out or clear out—he probably thought he was being a friend. He expected goodness from everyone. _It’s how he gets hurt_ , came Mike’s hard, tight thought. He didn’t remember walking back and sitting down in the living room, his thoughts caught up in this conundrum. No, he was being too hard on the chick. _Be nice_ , he ordered himself.

Okay, so Judy’s confusion explained her sometimes aloof, but sometimes extra-sociable attitude. Maybe she wanted a new crowd to hang with, who didn’t know her situation, wouldn’t sympathize or avoid the topic like the guy was dead. And yet she wasn’t exactly Miss Conviviality—well, maybe it was just Peter she liked. Fell for him at first sight, even if she wasn’t sure she should. And yet…there was still something about her manner, her being…the way she’d rattled off all that about her boyfriend just now. Like a machine gun. And it sounded— Mike took up his guitar, to help him think. Wow, it had gotten late. He whipped his head around at the creak of the door to see Peter coming in, with Judy, Judy wrapped in the blanket.

“Oh.” Peter looked from Mike to upstairs, as if he should be there.

“Got caught up.” Mike indicated his guitar and notebook. “It’s late.”

“Yeah. Hey, Judy’s gonna stay the night.” Peter ushered her to the bathroom, promising to bring her some sleepwear.

“Really?” burst from Mike when Judy closed the bathroom door behind her. “Is that a good idea?”

“What— Not for _that_ , Mike! _Jeez!_ ” Peter actually looked angry. “Can’t you see she’s upset? She needs to talk—”

“I didn’t mean—” He hadn’t. Of course not. “So you’re talking.” Mike gave a tight nod. “And she’ll be taking Davy’s bed?”

“What about my b…” Davy, entering, looked straight at the closed bathroom door.

 _I swear he has some sorta chick radar_ , Mike thought savagely as Peter explained, in between fetching a tee and sweatpants, knocking on the bathroom door and handing them over. Davy wouldn’t be happy. He was very proprietary about his stuff.

“Night, guys.” Judy’s voice was quiet and low as, still swaddled in the blanket, she crossed the pad to Peter’s room, Peter behind her, calling goodnights. But the expression on her face and the look in her eye? Mike didn’t understand it and he didn’t trust it. He wasn’t leaving Peter alone to face it. Whatever it was. Which meant staying close. Davy’s long, low whistle pulled him back to the present, as did the strength of the stare he levelled at Mike.

“It’s not like that,” he snapped.

“Not yet, no.”

Mike couldn’t argue with that.

“Whatever, still means I get the couch. Will you be long?”

Davy liked his sleep and Mike tended to insomnia. He puttered around downstairs, when he couldn’t sleep, reorganizing stuff, listening to music, songwriting, or reading. Offering Davy his bed would give him an excuse to stay downstairs, but could arouse suspicions… “What’s it to you?”

“I wanna go to bed.”

“Oh, well, think I’ll finish the cleaning.”

Davy, halfway to getting blankets and pillows from the cupboard, stopped. “You must be joking.”

Mike shrugged. “Not tired. Might play a little more.” He took up his guitar. “Oh, bet you’d like my room, huh?”

“Could do…” Wariness slowed Davy’s voice.

Mike let a smirk twist his lips. “Then think you can win it? Reckon you can beat me?”

“What, fight?” Davy rolled his shoulders.

“Jesus, _no_ , you little nut.” Mike indicated the bureau with its drawers. “Cards.”

“I’m knackered.” Davy, competitive to the last drop of blood, nevertheless fished out a deck. “Have to be something quick. First Jack out?”

“Sure.” Mike sat at the table and let Davy shuffle and deal.

“Ha!” Within seconds, Davy slapped his hand down on the Jack he’d dealt himself.

“Hmmm.” Mike span it out. “Best outta three?”

Davy won the next round too. He was lucky at games. He was soon finished in the bathroom and calling a, “sleep tight,” over his shoulder as he headed up the hurricane stairs. Mike made up the couch and pulled the lamp as near as he could to read himself to sleep. No point trying to hear anything Peter and Judy might be talking about, not with how far away the downstairs bedroom was and how thick its walls and door were.

He was tired, but his brain was skittering about. He took up a library book someone had left on the table and read a few chapters. Under the table were that month’s _Tempo_ , and _Verve!_ and _Lilt_ , and with Mike not caring much for fashion or beauty trends or culture reviews, the first held his attention, in particular the puff piece about college basketball star Frankie Neilson, whose career was on hold, the big leagues having to wait until he’d finished his military service. As a propogandist piece for youth conscription, it was fairly crude, but the details of the guy’s training and deployment were…interesting.

If Mike was asleep, one ear open, the door to Peter’s room opening had both his ears picked up and him awake. And Judy leaving the room and making her way through the kitchen, sticking close to the side of the area rather than walking through, had him sitting up. “Judy?” he called, his voice low, not to scare her. She stopped, then her arms came up and stuck out in front of her. Her steps changed to a glide and she meandered about. A few seconds later, she was muttering to herself

 _Sleepwalking?_ Wasn’t that a sign of mental turmoil? What to do? Wasn’t it dangerous to wake them? They got a heart attack or turned on you, or something? And what if she hurt herself on something in the pad? _Peter._ He’d mentioned sleeptalking and walking before, hadn’t he?

Mike slid from his blanket and toward the bedroom. Judy turned a little as he passed her, her eyes wide open and fixed. It could have looked scary, but it seemed almost cartoonish, especially the way she marched on the spot. He was just glad she didn’t follow him to the bedroom.

“Peter?” Mike’s breath caught in his throat to see him in his bed. He looked… _angelic_. “Pete?” He got his hand to Peter’s shoulder, gave it a tiny shake. Peter was bare-chested and his skin so warm. Mike curled his fingers tighter than he needed to. “Hey, Pete.”

And watching Peter wake, seeing him all confused and snuffly, like a little puppy, his hair dishevelled, until he shook it into place… “Mike?” he whispered, placing his hand on top of Mike’s. “Is this a dream?”

Oh, that hurt more than it should have. “Wake up.” Mike firmed his voice, removing his hand and standing back for Peter to sit, trying to will himself immune to the ripple of flesh and flex of muscle as Peter stretched. “Judy’s sleepwalking and I don’t know what to do. Didn’t you say both you and one of your brothers did that? What should we do?”

“Oh, I…” Peter cast a glance at the vacant bed to his side and levered himself out. “Is she still here?”

“Yes?” Puzzled, Mike followed Peter.

“I used to get into the garage and try to start the car,” Peter explained. “Managed it once, or so my parents tell me. I don’t remember.”

“ _Jesus!_ ” Mike’s heart leapt, thinking of teenage Peter sleepdriving around Connecticut, or Judy falling down the steps or the rocks from the deck.

Judy was still there, still sort of hovering. Mike stood back as Peter steered her from behind, making soothing noises, back to his room, like a sheepdog. “Thanks,” he whispered to Mike, guiding her in. “How is it you saw her?”

Mike pointed to the couch, then himself. “Lost at cards to Davy for my bed.”

“Oh?” Moonlight showed a frown crossing Peter’s face. “You went up against Davy? Davy always wins. Didn’t we say we thought he must cheat?”

“Yeah, well, you’d better see to your guest.” Mike turned away, lifting his head to acknowledge Peter’s, “Good night,” that floated out to him before Peter shut his door. He doubted it would be a good night for him, what was left of it. He had even more to think to about now, more puzzle pieces to fit together. Well, he had the patience for it.

Fine, Judy’s weather-wane behaviour could be attributed to her emotional distress—the guy she’d been involved with was being a coward; not committed to her but unable to let her go because he needed her to cling to, to get him through the horrors of being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Fine, she could have latched on to Peter as the first guy to treat her as more than a pretty, well-dressed blonde. Davy and Micky certainly hadn’t, for instance. Fine, that could be causing her even more confusion, hence the sleepwalking.

But what Mike couldn’t square into any of that was how Judy had looked when she’d first emerged, before she’d known Mike was there. _Normal._ She’d looked _normal_ , before she went into her theatrical performance. Which left Mike with more questions, namely, was she pretending to sleepwalk around the pad, and if so, why?


	14. Chapter Fourteen

“Geronim— _Mike?_ What—”

“ _Fucker!_ ” Mike curling too-late into a protective ball, cursed out Micky who’d leaped on top of him and then vaulted over the back of the couch. Bouncy little bastard had probably slid from the end of the bannister or jumped from halfway down the stairs to get more momentum and force, treating Mike like he was part of the jungle gym he made most of the pad into. “ _Why?_ ” he wheezed, when he could.

“Sorry, sorry! I thought you were Davy!” Micky gestured at the fetal curl that was Mike.

“ _Davy?_ I look like a five-foot-something mirror-hogging Brit to you, boy?”

“No, and you’re not sized like one either.” Micky pointed to the area of the couch he’d dive-bombed. “If you were, I wouldn’t have landed on you. I had it scientifically worked out. Sorry! Really. And no comebacks, okay?”

“We’ll see about that.” Mike straightened and stood, pulling on the jeans he’d removed as a concession to sleepwear. He folded his blankets, his movements cautious. “And you were leapin’ on top of Davy because…”

“Oh, just gonna razz him about getting the couch, while Pete’s getting—”

“It ain’t like that.” Mike made for the kitchen. Might as well start breakfast. “How come you’re so lively, anyways?”

“I dunno.” Micky considered. “Guess ’cause I’ve been early to bed the last two nights? Square night’s sleep and all that?”

“Huh. Well, it’s a gasser you have the extra zing—you can do the laundry run.” Mike raised a finger to halt any protest. “Make up for half-killing me. You crash-landed right on my n—”

“All right!” Micky pretended to cover his ears. “How come you slept down here?”

“Anyone else asks me that…” Mike clanged the spoon against the side of the coffeepot as he filled it, making it _ding_.

Micky giggled and Mike eyed him. “Wut.”

“I rarely see you so Texan.”

“ _Texan?_ ”

“Grouchy, then. Whatever. You know, before you get coffee and juice?”

“Oh. You mean like I’d start a fight at the drop of a hat―and I’d drop it myself?” Mike souped up his dialect. Peter liked that and— “Yeah. I’m ornery as a polecat first thing.”

“Glad I don’t usually see you at this hour, in that case,” Micky deadpanned, pouring them glasses of juice. “Oh no, more of that burnt trail mix for breakfast?”

“’Fraid so, partner.” Mike shook the container. “But if we eat it all up now, it gets it over with, right? And it’s not so bad. It’s healthy.”

“That’s just it!”

“And cheap.”

“That too!” Micky wailed. “I miss the glory days of wine and Cocoa Puffs.”

They’d all added an extra to their grocery shopping as a treat, on the strength of their short residency at the Trip, and Micky’s had been his favorite fancy cereal that only he’d been allowed to touch.

“Well, we get the spot at the Duke Box and you have chocolate cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Mike promised.

“Groovy. And don’t think I won’t. But what d’you mean it’s not like that? Pete’s not getting any? Yeah, I didn’t hear the bed squeaking or the headboard knocking into the wall, and I stayed awake as long as I could.”

“That’s…” Mike gave up on any attempt to teach Micky not to try find himself live porn. “No, she just needs someone to talk to at the moment.” He went to select fresh fruit to mix in with the cereal. Rate they were eating Vit C, none of ’em would get scurvy this year. “Her boyfriend got drafted. He’s almost up for out-processing.”

“Shipping out?” Micky wasn’t as familiar as Mike with military speak. Never would have to be, if Mike’s plans… “Oh, that sucks.”

“Yeah. But I’m surprised you didn’t know—didn’t she mention it? Okay, she and Peter weren’t exactly sticking around. But none of her friends mentioned it?” Mike asked.

“Noooo…” Micky considered. “But I don’t think Susie, Lisa and whatever the other one’s name was are close friends of hers, you know? Think Lisa said they were college friends. Or work placement buddies?”

Mike’s hand stilled on the plastic cereal box. “So it was like a reunion get-together?”

“How should I know!” Micky checked the coffeepot. “Oh, but the other one said a friend of hers knew us. Had heard us. That _she’d_ been invited to come hear us too but hadn’t been able to go and it was just as well, the way things turned out.” He frowned. “I didn’t get that last bit.”

“That’s nice. But going back to her friends—”

“Jeez, if you’re so interested, you should’ve come! With baby Henry,” he added before Mike could protest. “There were a bunch of kids there.”

“Yeah. I know one of ’em,” Mike muttered, batting away the piece of popcorn flicked at him in retaliation. “Hey!” He dodged another. “Where’re you getting it all from?”

“Pocket.” Micky pulled out a handful from his robe and, eyebrows arched over his almond eyes, blew it at Mike like magic dust. Mike ducked to the floor to gather the bits that hadn’t stuck in his hair.

“I cleaned this floor—you’re gonna eat those!” he threatened, advancing

“Safe! Home!” squealed Micky, ducking around him and diving under the kitchen table. “Safe zone—can’t get me here!”

Mike had just slid his way under the table to pin Micky down when the bedroom door opened and Judy came out.

“Excuse me,” she huffed, stepping over Mike’s legs on her way to the bathroom.

“Now see what you did? You woke them!” Mike took advantage of Mick’s distraction to rub the handful of popcorn he’d collected into his hair.

 _And put Judy in a mood too_ , he thought when she emerged, dressed, stomping her way through the pad. _Moody Judy… Good ring to it._ She didn’t want breakfast or a ride anywhere—her brother was coming to collect her.

“I guess she isn’t a morning person,” Micky whispered, where they stood at Peter’s window, drinking coffee and watching him see her off and not get a kiss goodbye.

“Or maybe she found your stack of ‘special interest’ magazines in the bathroom. I’m always telling you—”

“Hey! I only read those for the nude photographs,” Micky protested. He jerked his chin at the street. “Nice car, though, right?”

Mike nodded, his attention focussed on what could be seen of the driver. As before, he’d parked a little way down the street, rather than pull up to the garage at the side, or station in front of the house. He seemed as stressed as Judy. But, good car, yeah. And good of him to ferry his sister around…although, what did he think, collecting her from some guy’s house twice, the second occasion the morning after? Mike tried to imagine Micky or Davy doing that, for one of their sisters. Wouldn’t they want to meet the guy, check him out?

And didn’t this guy have to work? If he was that rich not to have to, like Nyles, wouldn’t Judy be too? At least enough not to do a job she didn’t like? Baffled, he cast a glance around the room to make sure Judy hadn’t left anything this time. She hadn’t…but something that should have been there…wasn’t.

Despite Micky urging him to get out before Peter came in, Mike examined the vision board Peter pinned stuff to: stamps, colors and shades Pete liked, drawings, pictures, poems, lyrics, fortune cookie slips…and photographs. Fewer photographs now, seeing as the strip Peter had taken in the kiosk, part of the small amusement park on the pier…was gone.

“Stall him,” he hissed at Micky, pushing him to the door. “I’m just gonna…”

They’d all had a turn, pulling on the silly hats and glasses and fake beards and mustaches supplied to take a set of four comic photos apiece before joining together for the joint ones. Only Peter’s photos had been different: he hadn’t realized or been too lost in thought to press the button to start the camera working to take silly pics and had ended up with a default set of four neutral-looking prints, as funny in their own way as the zanier ones of the other three. The thin rectangular space was there on the board, the pin too, but the photos were gone. Peter wouldn’t have given her them. They weren’t at that stage. Okay, he wasn’t, but…maybe Judy was? Like, some sorta really intense crush, or infatuation or something?

He made his cautious way out of the bedroom and circled around to catch Peter’s eye, determined to speak to him. He took a deep breath—

“Knock, knock? Uh, boys?”

“Mrs. P!” Micky exclaimed, leaping to open the door fully for their somewhat pale-looking and dark-glasses-wearing neighbor. “What smells so good? Apart from your lovely self, of course?” He took the covered metal baking tray she was carrying, shaking it curiously.

“Why, I thought…a thank-you, and an apology… so late…and…”

It took longer for her to stop twittering and leave than it did for them to devour the huge container of bacon and tomatoes she’d cooked for them to make up for last night. “Leave share f’Davy!” Mike ordered, his mouth full, guarding strips of bacon from Micky’s prodding fork as, not bothering with plates, they dug into the communal meal.

“Hey, if Mrs. P goes full _Lost Weekend_ next time, we might get eggs and sausage too!”

“ _George Michael Dolenz!_ ” Peter scolded.

“Don’t fret, we can ask for mushrooms for you,” Micky reassured him.

“Good job you got the extra fuel.” Mike pointed his fork at Micky. “Laundromat duty, remember?” 

He regretted losing the chance to speak to Peter as the usual chaos of a Monkee day got underway, starting with rounding up their laundry and persuading the other two to go with Micky—Mike was adamant he needed to stay and work on a song. He did, but just did not want the pad left empty.

Then it was rehearsal and his idea to break up their repertoire into themes, going from Micky’s slam book break-up songs to foot-tappers to ‘happy-in-relationship’ music, and romantic ballads, as none of them knew what Paul Duke, Duke Box owner, would want to hear.

“But I can’t believe none of us know the place, man!” Mike moaned as they agreed to call it a day. Or an evening. “We should have done more research than you having such a good time there last month that you can’t remember it!”

“The place is new-ish, but it’s already got a good rep.” Micky, addressed, tried to calm him down. “It’s a good match for us. Or we’re a good fit for it.”

“Mike, it’s fine.” Peter’s taffy-colored gaze softened to sweet caramel as he regarded Mike. “ _We’re_ fine. More than.”

He probably would have gone on to say more, but the phone rang then, as soon as Davy replaced it on the hook, for him, and his resulting conversation with Judy took up a chunk of time. Mike wasn’t sure how much, but Peter was still by the phone, if not on it, when Mike got back from the walk he’d taken to cool off. “Sorry,” he muttered to whatever Monkees remained. “I just want everything to go perfectly.”

Peter’s smile was wry. “That’s impossible. You must know that. Nothing, nowhere can ever be perfect.”

But a little later, sitting on the floor between Peter’s legs, his back to Peter sitting above him on the couch for him to work his strong thumbs into the knots at the base of Mike’s neck? Well, sweet agony though it might be, it came close to _perfect_ for Mike.

And of course the next day had to be hellish in comparison, what with Judy turning up bright and early and sitting through their final rehearsal. Mike didn’t normally mind people sitting in—audience response and reaction was useful—but listeners tended to want to be there, not sit with an unread book on their lap, looking as though they were counting down the minutes to something Mike couldn’t fathom.

Pete must’ve caught Mike’s look. “Judy needs a place to hang out. Not getting on with her roommate,” he murmured.

 _Gee, I wonder why_ , Mike was ashamed to find himself thinking.

“Looks like she’s moving in here!” Davy shook a maraca at the big bag Judy had placed on a kitchen chair.

 _What?_ Mike hadn’t noticed—

Peter laughed. “Judy kindly offered to cook a nice dinner for us to come back to.” He raised his voice so she could hear. “I said there was no need, but she insists.”

“Well, you have the charcoal grill out there, so I got chops and steak to braise and roast for a midweek cookout,” Judy replied, closing her book.

“Told you,” Micky muttered. “Chicks with means…it’s the way to go.”

“Peter’s practically a vegetarian,” Mike couldn’t stop himself saying, his voice combative.

“Which is why I got him beanburgers.” Judy stood, her chin up.

“And that’s very thoughtful. Thank you. Mike?”

Mike relaxed his stance to face Pete.

“Shouldn’t we start getting ready?”

“Oh, well, sure,” he agreed.

“Choose fingers for shower order?” Micky queried. “One, two, three…”

“Shoot.” _And if Judy thinks this system is stupid…_ He never found out her opinion of that, but by the look on her face when they all assembled in their double-breasted gray suits…

“That’s…what you’re all wearing?” she asked.

“Clearly. Why?”

“Nothing. Just…no, nothing.”

“You got something to say, say it.” His arms were folded, like hers were akimbo, so he dropped his to his sides.

“Well, the look would work better if you all wore open-neck shirts and no ties with those suits.” She gestured at the four of them.

“That what you think, huh?”

“Yes.”

Mike stared down at her. She held her ground.

“Mike?” Micky whimpered, tugging on his jacket from behind. “Say something.”

“Let’s try it.”

“ _Mike?_ ” Micky gasped.

Mike shook himself free of Micky’s clutch to tug his tie off. “You heard.”

“Different shirts,” Judy added. “All four of you in a different color. Nothing too strident.”

And goddam, when they reconvened, their outfits tweaked as she’d said, she was right.

“Yes, with the matching black ankle boots, that’s a nice twist on the British invasion look.” She nodded.

Mike caught her eyeing him. “Anything else?”

“The wool hat.”

“What about it?” He settled it straight.

“You’re…committed to it?”

“Damn right.” Mike took a deep breath. Of all the hills to die on—

“Green would look better than that blue. Make a visual link between the gray and your dark hair, and go better in general with your brown eyes, anyway.”

And fuck, if she wasn’t right again. And as she sat, watching and waiting, Mike understood the reason for the extra jangle to his nerves. It wasn’t just her presence. “Hey, Judy, couldn’t you come with us to the studio?” he asked. “Sounds like we need to hire you on. Official stylist, or whatever the term is. Make sure we look okay.”

Peter laughed. “Talk about a busman’s holiday.”

“What?” Mike and Judy asked together.

“Nothing. Just a saying.” Peter snapped his bass case closed.

“No. I should get on with the marinade for the chops and the seasoning for the steak.” Judy indicated the shopping bag.

“Yes, please!” cried Micky, wiping pretend drool from his chin.

And that alarm-bell jangle grew louder, threatening to deafen Mike, as the seconds ticked down to them having to leave the pad—with Judy alone in it. Her having free rein of the place? Why did he think that was what she was angling for…and that he shouldn’t—no, _couldn’t_ — allow it?


	15. Chapter Fifteen

Not knowing what he was going to say, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Davy? Davy, if you’re in there, save my life!”

“ _Christ_ , Toby!” Mike just about jumped out of his skin when she raced in yelling, the door banging from where she shoved it in her haste. “We gotta start closing and locking the door even when we’re in the house, guys!”

Toby skidded into Davy, which slowed her crazy dash. “Because of the increase in crime in summer?”

“That too,” Mike muttered, and rubbed his arm where she slapped him in retaliation. Her hand and the rings she wore hurt.

“Save your life, luv?” Davy rubbed his hands. “Like, mouth to mouth? Chest massage?”

“ _Guys!_ ” Mike tried, indicating Judy.

“Professionally, you nitwit!”

“What, like, if he charges you for it?” Micky threw in, rubbing his hands against Davy’s.

Mike clapped a hand on Mick’s shoulder and turned him away from Davy before they went into—and dragged everyone into—some sort of scene. He still couldn’t understand the Toby-Davy relationship. The closest he could get to describing it was kaleidoscopic—if that was a word—as it changed with every little twist. Today seemed to be some variation on old friends?

“So they love the concept and want more!” Toby finished.

Mike had missed something. Didn’t much care.

“That’s gear, Tobes!” Davy hugged her.

“Only, I’m tapped out for any more Women in the Spotlight! So, Davy, who was that girl you told me you helped get her inheritance, and she now runs Cunningham Inc.?”

“Ah.” Davy exchanged a glance with the other three. “That’s…a bit dicey. You see, what happened was—”

“Oh, I can guess!”

Mike betted she couldn’t.

Toby flicked through some pages in her writing case. “Well, what about Princess Bettina? Can you give me her lady-in-waiting’s phone number?”

Davy sucked in air through his teeth as Mike, Peter and Micky shook their heads. “That’s _really_ dicey. But who have you spoken to so far?”

“Dr. Lorene Sisters, TV star. Clarisse Rawlings, fashion model. Ellen Farnsby, theater actress. And Joannie Jans, of course. And they’re all onboard, preliminary notes done, but now _Brio!_ are pressing me for more interview subjects before they agree to run the series!” Toby slapped her hand down on her pages. “Can’t you think of anyone else?”

“We seem to have done most of the thinking for _your_ idea already,” Micky pointed out.

“Well, there’s—” About to mention Wendy Forsythe, ex-New Yorker and now Prince Ludlow’s wife, making her Princess Wendy of Peruvia, Mike stopped, a two birds-one stone idea taking root. He let it bloom. _Flower._ “You know, Toby, seems to me you’re missing an important element in the concept there. And one that’s in keeping with the spirit of _Brie_ magazine—”

“ _Brio!_ ” Peter fake-coughed.

“’S’what I said. With it being so avante-vanguarde and all…” Was that a thing? Mike had no idea and knew even less what kind of mag this _Bree_ effort was. How could he? Toby went through so many. “But what about Women _Behind_ the Spotlight? Women who do all the work to make the star shine and never get any of the reflected glory.”

“ _Oooh!_ ” Toby dropped to sit, scribbling notes. “So, alternate stories of female stars _and_ the women who make them shine? Because I will be using that sub-heading. Like…?”

Mike thought quickly. Never did do to play your ace in your first hand. “Well, Micky’s seeing Deanna—”

“Deandra.”

“Her too.” Mike grinned at him. “She’s a backup dancer on _Hubbub_ , right, Mick?” And liked to go out dancing every night as well. Which meant Micky had too, for a week or so…

“Yeah, at KLMTV at Burbank. She makes whatever singers are on that week look hip. Even the ones they have to shoot above the waist only, because they can hardly move their hips at all.”

“And you must know loads of women photographers, Toby?” _Probably._ “Publicists, set dressers for shoots, stuff like that? And here, the jewel in the crown”—or the ace in his hand—“we have Miss Judy…”

“FitzSimmons,” Peter supplied, in the silence.

 _Figures. That temper, mulishness…bet she’s really a redhead._ “Judy FitzSimmons, costume assistant at Cosmos Studios! Not only did she just make changes to our band uniforms—”

“That make us even more irresistible.” Davy preened.

“Yeah, you do look good. _All_ of you.” Toby took a moment out from her dilemma to ogle them.

“But in addition, why, if it wasn’t for her, stars like Joannie Jans and Frankie Catalina would be on screen in their street clothes!” Mike finished his pitch.

“ _Executive_ assistant,” snapped Judy.

“Oh, _yessss_!” Toby cried.

Mike tried not to catch anyone’s eye, because that exclamation had sounded like— He stood aside as Toby leapt up and fired questions at Judy, her speed and force making the executive costume assistant rattle off answers.

“So, now?” Toby finished, capping her pen and shoving it into the leather circle of her case. “Right now? So I can tape-record you? And we can get pizza and beer. On expenses.”

“Oh, but I arranged—” Judy waved a hand at her bag of food, lurking, lying in wait, on its chair.

Mike dashed to shove it into the icebox. “It’ll keep,” he assured her. “It’s really good of you to pitch in and help out a pal. Real kind. Shows such solidarity. It’s—”

“Enough?” suggested Micky, as Toby, arm through Judy’s, bore her away, still talking a mile a minute.

“Mike?” Peter’s hand brushed his, minutes later, when they loaded their instruments into the car. “What was that? I have no idea.”

Yeah. Mike didn’t either, but he was too busy triple checking each window was fastened and each door was locked, and the keys not left in the locks, so they couldn’t be turned from the outside, like in spy movies. He was still preoccupied by the puzzle that was Judy on the drive to Sunset, and Sunset-West Studios but forced himself to focus.

“Why are we auditioning here and not in the club, anyway?” he wondered, checking the numbers of the doors along the corridor against the slip of paper he’d been given.

“Saves time. With two rehearsal studios booked, a group can be setting up in one while another act’s playing in another, and so on,” a petite girl with a tall beehive hair-do answered from where she leaned against a closed door. She’d have been tinier without her high-heeled shoes.

“Is that so? Thank you for the information, ma’am.” Their room was the opposite one. “See you around,” Mike said, shepherding the others in.

“Oh, yeah.”

He understood later, when she and another girl came in with Paul Duke. Were they his official listeners, or something, was Mike’s sour thought, the way the guy barely paid attention. At least the chicks liked their set, applauding, requesting songs they’d heard the Monkees play at the Trip and commenting on their different band look today, which made Mike blush, which got him an _aww_. _Ain’t no secrets on Sunset Strip,_ he supposed.

But it kind of petered out when a plugger from a record label came in to speak to the small girl.

“Oh, that’s right! She’s the club DJ, Lola. Up on the platform thing!” Micky nodded.

 “And who’s the other chick, the talent booker?” Mike snarked.

“Talent scout, I think, yeah.”

“I…can’t help wishing I’d had this info earlier, Mick.” Mike tried to swallow his annoyance and approached the group. “So, it’s don’t call us, we’ll call you, huh?” he said, trying for jocular instead of irritated.

Lola looked Davy up and down, even more so than she had been. “You can call me,” she replied, handing him her card.

“Nice.” Davy twinkled a little as he took it.

 _All that and the only one to get something out of it was Davy, and that a date?_ Tempted to push their small audience into chairs and force them to listen, really listen, to another song, Mike had to watch them walk out to the studio across the corridor and the Foreign Agents, while the Monkees packed away and left.

“Hey.” Equipment stowed in the Monkeemobile outside on Sunset, Micky rubbed Mike’s back. “I know you’re mad, but no post-mortem until we get some food, okay? Let’s go get Everything Dogs. We earned ’em. Come on.”

The last thing Mike wanted was late lunch, but he followed Micky along the block to the outdoor hot dog place he always thought was more like a parking lot that just happened to have a food shack in the middle. Pete was just ahead of him in the line, kind of bopping from foot to foot, grooving to music in his head. Mike took a deep breath. With the jingle-jangle the day had become, he should have known better, but went ahead anyway.

“Guys, I wanna talk to Pete a minute.” He pointed at a table under the trees. “Get seats and we’ll be over?”

“Gee, didn’t think I played that bad,” Peter muttered, nevertheless obeying the jerk of Mike’s chin and taking his cardboard container and drink to follow him to the far table.

“No. Of course you didn’t.” Mike set his things out with care, keeping his eyes on his busy hands. “I want to talk about Judy.”

“Oh?” Peter’s fingers stilled on his drinking straw before he pulled its paper wrapper in two with a _snap_.

“Yeah. Look, don’t you think things are moving a little…” _No._ “Things with her are a little…weird?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Her. That’s she’s…” _How to say a couple sandwiches shy of a picnic, in polite?_

“She’s going through a rough patch. You see, her boyfriend—”

“Yeah, I know all that.”

“Then you know I’m offering her support and understanding. A different atmosphere, for want of a better phrase.” The straw was still in Peter’s hand—he hadn’t put it in his soda. And his tone was growing clipped.

“And she’s transferring onto you. Or whatever the word is.” Mike tried to forestall Peter’s question. “Not just crowding you, hanging around you, but imprinting onto you.”

“ _Imp…_ ” Peter shook his head. “Do you know how dumb that sounds?”

The word hung, flat and heavy. It was almost a banned word, not to be used in reference to Peter. People had always thought him dumb or slow, when Mike knew and made sure folks knew Peter was neither.

“Is that all?” Peter grabbed his food container. “Because if so, I’ll join the—”

“Okay, then. I think she’s sick. As in disturbed.”

“Oh my— _What?_ ”

“She changes mood with every puff of wind! She said she was doing stuff for work, then she has the week off? If she was supposed to be at work, how come she had some daytime college reunion arranged? Or vice versa? I think she’s a liar and I don’t trust her.” It burst out, all rapid-fire projectiles hurting Mike to unleash, and on a friend too. “She ain’t safe,” he finished.

“Wow.” Peter had half-stood and now sat heavily. “That is beyond cynical. I know your baseline is that people are out to cheat and hurt you, but you are magnifying and distorting the situation.”

“The fuck I am, Peter! And what is this, turn your own problem back on Mike week? I got Davy telling me to get my shit together and now you claiming I got pot paranoia?”

“Oh, that’s _interesting._ I didn’t know that was a ‘problem’ you thought I had.”

“I don’t!” Mike banged a clenched fist down on the wooden picnic table in frustration. “This _chick_ is the one with problems, man.”

“She does. And at the moment, an extra one in the shape of her roommate. And to give her some respite, I was going to talk to you three about her staying with us for a few days.”

Peter was still talking, something about a pull-out in the No-Room, but Mike could barely hear him. He had to rub his chest—it felt like he’d been hit, and his head was ringing. Judy, _coming to stay_?

“Guys!” Micky hovered. “You’re making a scene.”

“And upsetting Peter.” Davy was behind him. “Cool it, yeah?”

“Fine.” Mike managed to stand, hands raised, palms out. “I’ll go cool off. Lost my appetite anyway. I’m going home.”

“I’ll come with.” Seemed Mick had drawn the short straw. “I’m in the volleyball game.” Okay, that explained it.

“I’m staying here.” Peter stared at Mike.

“Me too.” Davy sat next to Peter.

“ _Don’t,_ ” Mike warned Micky as they walked to the car.

“Won’t,” Micky promised, keeping his word all the way home, mostly looking out of the window. “Just saying this.” He mimed unzipping his lips when they’d carried their instruments into the pad. “I heard you going off on Judy? If Pete likes her, that’s gonna be… Well, maybe if you spent a little time with her, you’d see she’s not some crazy psycho?”

“Just a regular psycho?” Mike muttered, under his breath. And one Peter wanted to invite to stay? He rolled his shoulders to relax them. This rift… Peter liked the woman. Micky suggested hanging out with her to see she wasn’t that bad. _Maybe I’m overreacting?_ _I want things right with Peter._ He realized he didn’t know Judy’s phone number. He knew where she worked. Okay, she wasn’t _at_ work and they wouldn’t give him her home number, but perhaps some one would call her, pass on his message to call him? He got the studio number from Enquiries and got through to Costumes. _Not Wardrobe._

“I’d like to speak to Judy FitzSimmons, please,” he asked the woman who answered. Good thing he knew Judy’s full name now. “I—”

“She’s off sick.”

“Excuse me?”

“She called in sick first thing Monday.” The woman sniffed. “No idea when she’ll be back.”

“Th-thank you.” On autopilot, Mike hung up. _Sick?_ She’d said… Oh, she was sick all right. But what kind of sick? Knowledge was power. Frowning, he scanned the row of books in the bureau. They had… They didn’t have. “Micky!” he yelled, to see him a few feet away, changed into beach gear. “Where’s that mental disorders manual we got from the Remington Clinic?”

“Nyles borrowed it. You know, when he was brainstorming how to get out of being drafted? In case being a rich white dude wasn’t enough?”

“ _Damn._ And he’s still away?”

“Yeah, or you could get your tux back too.” Micky turned to head out.

“He borrowed that too?”

“And my top hat and cane and pocket watch. Not the cufflinks though. Said this year’s theme wasn’t Liberace.”

“Yeah… Thanks. Good luck in the…” Whatever Micky was doing.

Making a face, Micky left him to stew. Mike thudded his palm against the bookshelf. Fine, no help there. But he did need help. Because that chick? Wasn’t right. Only Mike didn’t know what kind of wrong she was. He thought of that clinic. Yeah, professional help…

A sheet of paper on the floor, white with weird blue writing, wafted up then down in front of him, in the delayed breeze from the sundeck door opening and closing, perhaps. Whatever. The pad's weirdness was benign—it didn't scare Mike. He snatched at the page before it landed.

Oh, blue because it was a carbon copy! A copy of Toby’s master sheet for this series of articles, which must have fallen from her case earlier. Mike frowned at it. Subjects’ names, addresses, phone numbers, with a column for action taken: calls, mail, faxes, face to face and their dates. Judy’s details were on there from where Toby had added them earlier, but that didn’t interest Mike as much as the name and contact of a psychiatrist-psychologist. Someone who’d…helped them before.

Before he’d thought it through, Mike dialed the number. “Hello, ma’am?” He cleared his throat when the secretary replied. “I’d like to speak to Dr. Lorene Sisters, please. She doesn’t know me, but it’s mighty urgent."


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a turn for the comedic, the paranormal and the poly. Apologies in advance.

“Urgent?” repeated the secretary. “You’re…with the Agency?”

“Ma’am?”

“You work for the Agency?”

The way she enunciated it, with a capital A, had Mike confused. “Yes?” he answered, because all he could think of was the job they’d taken on recently, making up numbers at that party, for which they’d been hired through an agency.

The woman’s “Putting you straight through, _Tex_ ,” had him gasping. He could almost hear the wink down the phone line. _What in the world?_

“Well, hello, there. Or should I say, howdy?” came the unmistakable deep, cultured tones of Dr. Sisters, familiar from her twice-weekly TV shows.

“Howdy?” Mike replied, bemused.

“Ma’am.”

“Excuse me?”

“Howdy, _ma’am_ ,” she prompted.

“Oh, of course. Excuse me. It sure is good of you to take my call, ma’am. It’s like this—”

“What are you wearing.”

It wasn’t a question. It sounded more like a purr. Blinking, Mike looked down at himself. “Well, uh, a gray suit and—”

“No! Do it properly—start at the hat.”

“H…” Mike couldn’t form the word, instead sweeping his wool cap from his head and mangling it in his hand.

“And don’t leave out the crease pattern. You should know this, but my favorites are the Salem and the horseshoe. Well? Go on,” she urged when he hesitated. “Don’t be afraid to go into great detail about your hand-tooled thick leather belt, your _enormous_ silver belt buckle and your bandanna. You have free choice with that, keeping my favorite colors in mind. Wait. Before we start, how tall are you?”

“Six-foot-three,” Mike was startled into replying.

“With most of that legs?”

“Well, yeah.” He glanced down. “They are long. My inseam’s thirty-three inches.” He had to hold the phone away from his ear at the almost-squeal this elicited. He could hardly make out her next words. “Boots? Sure, I have tall leather boots. Got a brown calfskin pair with fold-overs…” He found he was pointing at the closet where they were housed, and shook his head to break the spell. “But I think there’s been some misunderstandin’. Ma’am,” he added, a little late.

“And how would you say _that_ in Texan?” The purr was back and with a click the TV switched itself on, making Mike spin around to gawp at it. Lorene was on the screen, leaning back in her chair, and as he watched, she swung her legs up onto her desk with a _thunk_. An anticipatory, almost predatory, smile pulled at one half of her mouth and her eyes were half-hooded.

“Well, perhaps, that someone’s got their ox in a ditch?” Mike stared at the TV, his eyes widening when Lorene reached her hand down and eased her tight pencil skirt up. She had good legs. “Dr. Sisters, I can’t help thinking you were expecting a different phone call? Someone else? Some…thing else?”

“ _What?_ ” Lorene sat up straight, her feet slamming to the floor with a sharp _crack_. The TV switched itself off with a sizzle that had Mike fearing for its innards. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, any languor in her tone replaced by sharp suspicion. “You’re not from the Agency!”

“I worked for an agency. I told the secretary when she asked me.” Mike wondered if he were drunk. Because this conversation? Was making a kind of sense that wasn’t.

“Not the Lone Star Agency, though, hmm?”

“Well, no—”

“So you’re not a Texscort at all!”

“A…Tex…scort?” It took him a few seconds to juggle the strange word with her strange conversation of earlier. “A _Texan escort_?” He hadn’t even known there was such a thing, let alone a demand for it, or agencies to meet that demand! “No, ma’am. I’m sure not.”

“Pity. Are you looking for work? Because—”

“Dr. Sisters, _please_!” Mike yelped, her abrupt switch to sharpness and now her slide back to the purr confusing him almost as much as the earlier conversation had. “I called you for your help. You helped us—me and my friends—before, so I thought you’d be the best person to make sense of all this now.”

The _tink_ of a lighter and her tight inhalation told Mike she was lighting one of those slim cigarillos she smoked. “Give me one good reason why I should help you, let alone give you a…personal phone service,” she said, dropping the last three words one by one, like pebbles into a deep pond.

“Personal…phone…service?” Mike repeated, catching on, as he was meant to. He closed his eyes, already hating himself and what he was about to do. “Well, while I might would’ve gotten me a ten-gallon mouth, I’m fixin’ to be a-talking faster than double-struck lightning. Ma’am.”

“Very good, cowboy.” The purr was making a reappearance.

He hoped that _thunk_ wasn’t her swinging her legs back up onto her desk. He really needed her focusing. “You read out a letter from Tormented. It—”

“Was heartfelt and ungrammatical. I recall.”

“Well, yeah. It’s the same guy now. And there’s a girl. I don’t know if he’s into her, but she’s into him and…”

“And you’re in love with him.”

Mike gripped the phone tight, his shoulders hunching. “Ma’am, I—”

“That’s fine. It may color your judgment, though.”

“Reason why I’m a-calling you.”

“Touché.”

“Don’t know about no furrin words. I’m a straight-shootin’ southerner who’s gonna—”

“How about we park that for a future…date, hmm? You can owe me. And I will collect.”

That…might prove tricky at some future point, Mike reflected. _But, needs must._

“Tell me what about the girl has you so upset? I’m assuming Tormented has been attracted to and is attractive to other women?”

“Yeah. He’s real good-looking and—”

“ _How_ good-looking?” Lorene asked with the slight cough of a boss recalling a junior to his duty.

“Oh, right.” Mike thought he got it. She needed a little something on account. “Well, I'd rather watch him walk than eat fried chicken, iffen y’all know what ah mean? But her, I think she’s schizophrenic! Or, I don’t know, a psychopath. Something _ic_ or _path_.”

Under Lorene’s questioning, Mike detailed everything, from Judy’s icy hostility at their first encounter to her seeming to warm to Peter to the way she appeared angry and stressed at hanging around him and them and their pad and how she’d acted like a bobby-soxer at a sock hop, almost, to drag them out on a quadruple date.

It all poured out and he broke off only occasionally, when Lorene directed him to rephrase something in Texan, to tide her over. Which meant Mike described Judy’s ever-changing style of ‘geddups’ and made reference to the ‘plunder room’ where Mike had caught her waiting for Peter and the ‘settee’ Mike had been on when he’d witnessed her fake-sleepwalking.

“Ah think she’s a-pumping mud. Ma’am,” was his big finish to listing the girl’s incongruities, irregularities and inconsistencies.

“She might be, but her symptoms don’t fit any pathology I know.” The tinkling noise suggested the doctor was drinking something with ice in. “What she is is a liar, however. The reason she gave you for her presence in the closet was a lie.”

“How—”

“Because no guy would forget having arranged to grope a pretty blonde girl! You’re a man—a six-foot-three long-legged Texan of a man, but I digress—would _you_ forget having set that up?”

_Well, no._

“You’ve been overthinking things, as I’m guessing is your wont. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one, you know. So, she’s lying. About what? When did it start? Figure that out and you’ll know what she really wants. And notice that I said what, not who. Now, I have a call on my other line, and I’m presuming this time it’s really Dusty, the _Tejano_ horse wrangler and tie-down roper champion I ordered. Until next time, Michael.”

The phone went dead. Mike spun from the receiver in his hand to the TV that suddenly switched itself on to show Lorene waving goodbye, then off, one question in his mind: _how did she know my name?_ Along with that puzzle, Dr. Sisters’ words burrowed away in his mind, all through the scalding-hot shower he felt the need to take after the way he’d, well, _paid_ for a consultation, and the simple spaghetti dish he got together and left in the oven for the others. Small compensation for the cookout they weren’t getting, but…

 _When did the lying start? About what?_ Peering through the telescope to see Micky competing on the beach and the others spectating, Mike tried to let his mind arrange all the puzzle pieces to answer the questions. He went upstairs to his room, guitar in hand, for peace to think. Lost in mapping out the picture, he stared blankly at Micky later, standing in front of him holding out a soda.

“Not your usual brand,” Mike commented, taking it.

“Not your usual roommate.” Micky indicated Peter, following him into the bedroom. “That company’s sponsoring the volleyball in the Summer Beach Games and…” He narrowed his eyes at Mike. “Mike, are you…pinching yourself?”

Mike blushed. “Just a precaution.” After the last time ‘Peter’ had been in his room…

Shaking his head, Micky made for the en suite.

“Michael.” Peter had changed into jeans too. “May I sit down?”

For a millisecond, Mike debated wisecracking some variant of, “It’s a free country,” but rejected it. It was trite; Peter would challenge the premise anyway, and Mike wanted honesty between them. “Please,” he replied, shifting his legs and setting the soda bottle down on his bedside table.

“I want to apologize,” Peter began. He stopped when Mike shook his head in disbelief.

“No, I didn’t mean—” Mike grabbed Peter’s wrist, stopping him rising. Peter tended to catch him out. Constantly. “Peter. Stay. Please. But what could _you_ have to apologize to _me_ for?”

“About what I said earlier. About you automatically assuming anyone you meet is out to get you. It’s not quite true. Not so much now. You’re making progress.”

And his honesty was outta sight. “Thanks? No, really. Thanks.” He was making strides. He’d never be as open and trusting as Peter but…wouldn’t want to. That was Peter’s thing. He stretched for his soda and Peter passed him a church key to open it. He handed the bottle to Peter to take first sip. “I never meant to suggest I thought anything bad about you,” he told Peter, meaning it. “No criticism, no complaint, nothing. I swear.”

“I know. We had a disagreement and I don’t want it to fester.” Peter returned the soda. “I won’t ask about Judy staying—”

“No. Let me think about it, okay?”

“Mike?” Peter tilted his head, making his bangs fall just so, one long lock tangling in his eyelashes, and Mike’s mouth dried at the sight. He was glad he held a drink in his hands.

“I’m… Gimme…a day. That’s all,” he asked.

“Then it’s your badge and your gun?” Micky re-emerged.  “’Cause you sound like a maverick deputy getting twenty-four hours to act on a hunch.”

Mike busied himself taking another swig of the pop. Micky was very often perceptive. Good job he rarely knew it.

“We all in here?” Davy came in and sat next to Peter, his _everything okay?_ glance at his roommate asking without words if backup was needed. Those two were tight.

With a, “Me too!” Micky dived onto the bed as well.

“Hey, you break this frame, I’m takin’ your bed!” Mike warned him, barely saving the rest of the soda. He passed it to Davy, who refused, holding his stomach.

“I drank enough, down on the beach. I’m just glad that radio station’s sponsoring the surfing, day after tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah!” Mike had almost forgotten the Monkees had entered as a team in the event. God, he’d hardly practiced and wasn’t that good to begin with. “Why did we—”

“Did _you_ ,” Peter corrected, the telepathy of friendship or Mike’s predictability enabling him to cut in.

 _Ah, okay._ He’d said Mick, the sports nut, who entered all the beach sports going, could put their names down, in the hopes of getting interviewed on air and so promoting the group. You never knew. He looked at the other three members of their foursome, letting himself feel their bond glowing warm and strong. It was still as tight-knit, wasn’t it?

“You know what we should do?” he said, the words forming along with the idea. “Grab our blankets and pillows, share whatever beer’s in the icebox and whatever Peter’s got…to complete the corruption of minors…” He lunged to wrestle-tickle Micky. “Then settle in to watch whatever crap’s on the idiot box and—”

Micky pounced and pinned him in turn. “All sleep down there, in a big Monkee pile?” he begged, his rangy body imprisoning Mike’s.

Mike grinned and nodded, almost deafened by Micky’s cheers.

“Bags me Monkee in the middle!” Micky demanded. 

“We’ve come a long way in two years.” Peter’s eyes glowed a soft tawny and Mike knew he was referring to more than their early-days’ communal mattress in the living room, where they’d topped and tailed to sleep.

“Yeah. But it doesn’t do to forget where we came from. So, we should play at Barney’s next week.” Mike reached out so Peter could take his hand and pull him out from under Micky and to his feet. He basked in the proud-of-you smile that made Peter’s face even more beautiful. _So pretty he'd make a man plow through a stump_ , Mike found himself thinking, in Texan. It was all so bizarre that he had to laugh, loud and long.

Micky eyed him. “Pete, whatever you’ve got, you should cut Mike off already,” he advised.

“Well, I’m a little busy at the moment,” Peter called back from the landing. “Because…the floor is made of lava!” And with that challenge, he swung himself up onto the railing.

“The _entire_ floor?” Leaping to curl himself around the stairs’ central support pillar, Micky looked as though Christmas and his birthday had both come at once.

“Oh, what is this ‘the floor is made’—” Mike pushed past him so he could hurl himself onto the bannister, stomach first, and slide down the curving metal, whooping in triumph and ignoring Micky’s shouts that he was cheating, to lead the Monkee charge for the main floor. He managed to hoist himself over to a chair, where he had to stand and try to catch the pillows and blankets Davy remembered they’d need and so pelted him with from above.

“And I thought you were good at this, Mick!” Mike crowed, trying to glimpse Micky through the barrage.

“Oh, I am. Which is why I remembered I’d need…pajamas!” He came out of their bedroom in his sleepwear. “Unlike some, who have now got to work out how to get upstairs again…”

Mike groaned. He’d let himself in for this Monkee madness evening and had no one to blame but himself. He hoped, really hoped that a few hours spent in close proximity to or the night spent co-sleeping with his fellow Monkees would give him the answer to the Judy-shaped problem hanging over him. _Over us_ , he amended, diving onto the kitchen table and thus the icebox, to retrieve a beer and hold it up in victory. He’d be needing it, he knew.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Mike woke with his back, rather than his front, stiff for a change—the pad’s living room floor was hard, even with blankets to lie on, and sleeping next to Davy didn’t do anything for him, although the l’il biscuit did look cute kinda snuggled around Mick’s hand like that. Mike had positioned himself there, on the end, deliberately, just in case, laughing at Micky’s insistence he _was_ in the middle, despite the four of them being an even and not an odd number. _Odd group though_ , Mike thought, a new grin starting.

He’d slept without a pillow, his trick to make himself wake early. Stretching slowly and silently, and cursing under his breath when his back cracked, Mike managed to slip free of the Monkee pile and make it to the bathroom without waking anyone. His luck couldn’t hold and, sure enough, he stepped on the squeaky floorboard near the No-Room.

“Where you going?”

The squeaky floorboard that had Davy, of all people propping himself up on his elbows, blinking at him from under his messy bangs, or fringe, as he called it.

“Got some business to take care of,” Mike replied, keeping his voice low and jerking his thumb toward the front door and the outside world.

 “Don’t wallop the bugger too ’ard.” Davy sank down again.

“Huh?”

“Paul Duke. You were pissed off at him not paying attention and not allowing us inside his hallowed club to audition.”

Yeah, he had gone on about that last night, he supposed, when encouraged to lie in a head-to-head star to ‘talk it out’.

“So, think on. We’re not doing that well we c’n afford bail money,” Davy finished.

“ _That’s_ where you think—”

But Davy was asleep again, or faking sleep and so not in the mood to talk. Mike scribbled a quick note to remind the others what they’d agreed on last night, that someone should be in the pad at all times today, in case the Duke Box called, following their audition yesterday. It wouldn’t do to miss their chance and see a residency or a regular spot handed to the next group on the list.

Mike pinned up the huge sheet of paper and his gaze snagged on Micky, who looked very much at home draped over Pete, who didn’t look as if he minded. Peter grunted and twitched.

“S’ry.” Micky slid off and onto his back, revealing the boner that had presumably been digging into Peter’s side, the source of his discomfort.

“’S’oke.” Peter shifted, giving Mike a clear view of _his_ tent pole, outlined through his striped pajama pants, a match for Micky’s. Probably were Micky’s.

Mike tried to decide how he felt about that, and his certainty that this wasn’t the first time the pair had been that close. But as he stood and stared at Peter, he felt once more the weight of his feelings for him, that newfound sensation of coming into possession, or awareness, of something precious. It was priceless, yeah, but not something like a gold trophy or a crystal cup that he _carried_ , he now understood. It was more like something organic, growing, its tendrils stirring and stretching out.

Did Peter feel it too, emanating from Mike, or even perhaps a tiny shoot of it in himself, even as he lay there asleep?

Lorene had said yesterday that Mike was in love with Peter. Well, yeah, Mike knew that now too. Knew he’d been this way for a while. He simply stood, luxuriating in the budding feelings waiting to unfurl. To awaken, almost, like Peter, sleeping so sweetly there. _Love is sleeping._ Mike filed that line, that image, away for a more suitable time and tore himself from the pad while he still could.

He had a mystery to solve and people to protect, even if the answer to the problem or even the shape of the problem itself hadn’t been gifted to him by the power of shared proximity to his bandmates, as he’d hoped.

 _When did the lying start? About what?_ Dr. Sisters’ questions still rat-a-tatted through his head as he sped on his motorbike to the address he’d memorized. _When did the lying start?_ Right at the beginning, near as Mike could see it. _“Begin at the beginning.”_ Wasn’t that something Peter quoted, too? Arriving, Mike parked a few yards down from the main door of the small, new apartment complex and fiddled with his motorbike, spreading out a few tools and coils of cables near him on the sidewalk as an easy excuse for having had to stop there.

He had a good view of the door that should be Judy’s, according to the information Toby had noted down, and just hoped he was early enough to see someone coming out of it. A few minutes later, someone did just that. A guy, and one Mike recognized. _Her brother is her roommate? But he gives her rides, panders to her—how can she say they don’t get on?_ Mike couched lower behind his front wheel as Judy came out too, just for a minute, to carry on the argument the two were having. _Bet the neighbours love their tempers._ And yet, in addition to angry, they both seemed…pinch-faced and, well, scared?

Damn, the guy vanished, presumably into a parking garage. Mike kept his eyes glued to its entrance, and it was only when the guy emerged and drove past, close to Mike, that Mike understood he’d seen him three times, not just the two times in Beechwood. Scooping his props away, Mike checked no one was watching from the complex and started his bike to tail the guy. He thought he knew where they were going, and he was right, even before they hit one of the city’s longest boulevards.

The guy had hardly stationed his car not far from the anonymous, second-rate-looking building when two guys barrelled from the shadows of the car lot next door and into him, their momentum thudding him against the wall. Mike, driving slowly past, was almost braking, his instinct being to help, before he forced himself on, even slower, earning a cold stare from one of the goons. He couldn’t catch what was said, but the body language of the trio, in particular the _you owe us_ of the two hoods and the _I_ _just need a little more time, I swear_ from their victim screamed _debts_ to Mike. But what kind? Serious money, he had no doubt. The lazy stereotype, based on Judy’s surname, would be gambling debts. _Oh, for f—_ He wasn’t thinking quickly or clearly enough. This guy didn’t share her surname.

And, sure enough, later at the city Recorder’s, the deed of ownership of the property was in the name Mike had met the guy under. The man had bought the unit in the complex recently. Mike paused. If the lying had started at the beginning, then _“begin at the beginning”_ made it…when they’d walked into Cosmos Studios’ Costumes department. Where they’d learned the evening wear had come from Howard Films, in London. And so Mike’s next stop was the Main Library, on Santa Monica Boulevard, and its back copies of _The Times_ of London. Might as well check that out. The English studio had existed—Davy had talked about it and Mike thought he recalled a few of its movies. _Films,_ he amended _._ _Fil-ums_ , Davy had pronounced it when they’d first met him.

Mike found a few articles here and there about the movie studio finding a buyer and being sold to Cosmos— _oh, its stock._ _Not its property._ That was going to a developer, to build a housing estate. Well, yeah, made sense. “If Cosmos were buying the lot, they’d surely leave all the stuff there, to use,” he said out loud, earning a few shushes he barely registered, absorbed in reading that Cosmos planned to acquire or develop a television production subsidiary, intending to produce their own shows and syndicate Cosmos’ theatrical film library to television. If they were planning on churning out historical or adventure serials, yeah they’d be needing a load of costumes. There was nothing about Judy, playing transatlantic gopher, of course.

God, _The Times_ is dry, Mike couldn’t help thinking. He read a few weekly and monthly magazines and journals, both national and UK, plus the dailies, and _The Times_ ’ lack of puns or jokes made the one alliterative sub-headline he noticed stand out. Well, that, and the photograph of the Silver Cloud in the story. Man, he’d love to drive one. He glanced at the _Rosenfeld Robbed in his Rolls Royce_ article—and something made him read it properly, and then re-read it.

The newspaper didn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy for the flashy, self-made businessman, prone to showy publicity stunts to bring attention to his products. Mike stopped to fetch a business dictionary to understand what a corporate raider and asset stripper did, and yeah, didn’t feel that sorry for the guy who acquired or took over companies to break them up and sell off the bits, or incorporate them into a huge new ‘streamlined’ group, forcing his practices on them.

Further articles showed the guy upping the reward offered, but Mike still didn’t feel very sympathetic toward him, thinking he shouldn’t have made such a publicity stunt of bidding at the auction for the biggest diamond mined that decade, then boasting that he was having it cut down into jewellery for himself, his wife, oh and ex-wife _and_ his mistress, and showing off his shiny accessories every chance he got. His movements must have been easy to track and rob.

Seemed some correspondents in the _Letters_ page thought the theft was staged – a further publicity gambit, seeing as the distinctive pieces couldn’t really be worn out in public. Mike didn’t. Not judging by the guy’s vitriol and his promises what he’d do if he got his hands on— _Hmm. There’s hands on and keeping your hands clean. Deniability._

His head spinning with information, his brain hurting with adding it all together and his stomach growling from having missed breakfast and lunch, Mike made his way home. Davy was there, like in the morning, but the pile of bedding was gone.

“Not in jail then?” Davy greeted him.

“Nah. Oh, goddam this floor!” The board slipped to one side under his foot, almost tripping him.

“We usually put something over that one,” Davy observed, indicating the cleared space, not yet filled with furniture or their possessions, which tended to spread in waves.

“Well, maybe it’s time we fixed it. We did say.” And had negotiated a rent reduction in exchange for doing repairs themselves. They’d got manuals and supplies. He looked at Davy in his dark blue suit. “Micky’s mom’s? What is it this week?” Mrs. D’s excuses for feeding them a big meal while letting them save face that they needed the hand-out varied.

“It actually is one of his sisters’ birthdays this week.”

“Yeah, so we can’t be late!” Micky threw in, coming in with Peter, both of them fresh from the beach shower and heading for the closet and their suits.

Mike was reminded of their earlier closeness. “Hey, anyone call?” he asked.

“Not any call you’re waiting for.” Davy crossed to tear down the reminder about it Mike had left.

“So I’d better wait a bit more.” Mike tested the floorboard, seeing how much it was warped, how far the damage went. Right into the closet, he guessed, by the squeak.

“Not coming?” Davy asked, making Micky stick his head out.

“No. Don’t think so. Say thanks and sorry to your mom from me. And I want to start the repairs. Babbitt’ll be back soon and we promised. Hey, Peter? Is Judy coming to watch us surf tomorrow?”

“I…don’t know.” Peter emerged, looking good in his dark suit and levelling his gaze at Mike. Seemed Mike passed muster. “I could call and ask her?”

“Call from Mom’s. Come on! She gets cranky if people get late and ruin her timing with the food,” Micky urged.

She did, too. Once the pad was empty, Mike sat, cross-legged like Peter did, focussing on his version of a mantra. _When did the lying start? About what?_ He’d begun at the beginning, and even before that, in a kind of prologue, and so moved on to the next chapter. _Judy arrives at the pad._ He watched it play out, like a scene with a title. _Judy comes back again. And again._ He let Lorene’s words— _you’ll know what she really wants_ —echo.

He stood to get food and the give of the board under his weight got him mad. He studied the do-it-yourself manual. He’d done similar repairs before and it wasn’t that complicated to listen for creaks or test for looseness, then see which boards had dried out or worked loose from their fittings, or even split or broken. And in the No-Room, when he shoved the rails of clothes and boxes and bags right to the back and went to lift the offending board, the lightbulb that switched on over his head had nothing to do with the bright lamp he’d brought in to illuminate the space.

Carefully, patiently, Mike eased his prize free and swore fluently for at least a minute when he held it firmly in his hand. When he could move, he ran around the pad like a madman, scrabbling for the picture postcard that’d come the other day, then dashed for the phone. Jesus, their bill would be huge this month, but there was no help for it. He didn’t manage to speak to the person he’d called, but trusted the message would get passed on—and hoped the guy understood it—and that he’d be called back.

Knowing he’d regret it when it came to removing it, Mike taped his find to him, keeping it close all night and all the next morning, when he was one of the first on the beach, practicing. He signaled the others, making their way through the gathering crowds. “See you got my note.”

“Yes, we locked up. And…we’re really wearing these?” Micky eyed the four of them in their red tees and red and blue striped shorts.

“Yup. They make us stand out in the crowd.” Mike play-snapped Micky’s red suspenders, watching Peter wave Judy over and her eyes widen at their unconventional surf gear. She wasn’t the only one. “Hi, Judy. Hey, have to confess I ate one of your chops for supper last night, sorry. I got so hungry after all the DIY. I got really into it and attacked the floor.”

“Yeah, Hurricane Mike tore up half the pad,” Micky joked, his eyes on the waves.

“I knew it was the joists. Oh, he’s good.” Mike pointed at a rival. “I’m starting on the cupboard skirting board later. Got it all set up.”

“Set out, you mean. You messed it all up! Oooh, wipe-out!” Davy winced at the guy tumbling in the shallows.

Judy’s sudden pallor could be put down to that, Mike supposed.

The crowd thickened around them, people jostling for the best view and to be near the radio station tent. In the hubbub, Mike caught a few words from Judy, about needing the ladies’ and a key and… She glanced over her shoulder a few times as she made her way to the pad. But she didn’t see him, not when he dodged behind the rocks and threw on the nondescript board shorts and T-shirt and hat, or when he sprinted along the top and then the road, to arrive at 1334 and rush through the front door before she got in the sundeck entrance.

He was still panting when he dashed into the closet, but not so much that he couldn’t hold out his hand, palm flat, when she sneaked in, and ask, “Looking for this?”

 _This_ being the missing diamond cufflink.

Judy screamed.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

“Wow. That’s quite some reaction there, babe. Guilty conscience?” Mike enquired, pushing away from the far wall where he’d been leaning, one foot propped against it.

“I’m not your—you startled me!” Judy’s smile took its time in coming and didn’t reach halfway to her eyes when it did. “I wasn’t expecting, to, well…”

“To find anyone in here when you came to use the john? Except, no, that can’t be why you’re in here, because you’ve used the bathroom in the pad before. A couple of times now, right?” Mike nodded. “Oh, were you looking for your sweater? Ah, wait. You took it home with you. Unless you left it behind again?” He wondered how far he’d have to push her.

“Oh, very funny.” Judy clapped. “You should be on the stage. Ah, wait. You are.”

 _Okay, not very far._ Mike was glad. It should make things easier.

“That…” Judy pointed to his palm and swallowed. “Was in here all this time?”

Mike closed his hand over the treasure. “All this week, yeah. Since Micky wore it at the Edwards’ party. He took his shirt off after without undoing most of it. He’s a bit of a slob. Great guy, but not the world’s neatest, you know? Left the cufflinks in.” Mike tut-tutted, then faked a laugh. “I remember how shocked you were to learn he swapped accessories with Peter, Mick preferring the sparklies. And that—” _The wrong ones were stolen that evening,_ he wanted to say, but had no chance.

“And that you seem to know I’ve been trying to get them back,” she cut in.

He…hadn’t quite expected that, her to seize the lead. Wouldn’t like to go up against her at cards. “Oh, where are my manners?” Buying time, he indicated the messy space. “Standin’ jawin’ in here. Wouldn’t you like to go sit a spell in the den?”

“No thanks. Do you want to know the story? What happened? It’s…” She shook her head. “I made a mistake. Screwed up. Got in over my head.”

Mike gestured to a box, for her to sit, taking a seat opposite her. “Go on.”

“You guessed early on there was something wrong, right?” The new smile she gave him reminded him even in the half-light of the softened look she kept for Peter. “What tipped you off?”

Whatever this was, he wasn’t buying it. “The clothes. The stock. You said it was to be given away, but then you said you’d logged it into the department inventory, or something. It seemed contradictory.” He pushed a set of small cardboard boxes near his feet flush against the wall, wanting the space as clear as possible. Just in case.

“Yeah.” She rubbed her forehead, sighing, like she’d done when she first came to their pad. “I shouldn’t have given the items away. I misunderstood, or didn’t hear, or blanked out, or something. Whatever. Chalk it up to the stress of the job…” This came with another sigh. “Costumes for that party were only to be loaned. I loused up.”

“So, take them back.” Mike ran his fingers down the sleeve of a tux. “It’s no problem. Why not ask us to hand them over?”

“You had them altered. Tailored to fit. And they’re not so important,” she said, when he opened his mouth to speak. “The accessories were. Are. They’re needed. For a project. Filming.”

“Again, why not ask us to return them?” Mike stood and rummaged for some of the other trinkets, sitting again after. “Here.”

“No. Not those. Just the diamante cufflinks.” Judy jerked her chin at Mike’s other hand. “And I could hardly admit to you all I’d messed up, could I? Especially when the work environment is so hostile anyway, and…” She shrugged.

“Right. How they taking it, back in the department? Can’t be that bad, right, if you got a few days’ leave? Vacation days, like, for going overseas and working extra, or something?” Mike had no idea where he was going with things. Just hoped some signpost would appear. _Soon._

“Well, it is bad. And I’m not exactly taking a vacay. I’m on a suspension, you know, disciplinary leave, to sort this out. I was going to tell you all today, actually. Because I only have a week, and then…” She bit her lips and opened her eyes wide, like a kid trying not to cry.

“Oh, Judy.” Mike’s turn to sigh and shake his head. “Is this appeal to my sense of chivalry because I’m from the south? Believe me, even in Texas, we can smell horseshit when it’s being shovelled right in front of us. _Especially_ in Texas.” Slouching on his makeshift seat, he tipped an imaginary hat to her. “And you know, you might wanna try all this on something worse than me at Math? ’Cause this? Just ain’t addin’ up.”

She stood, and Mike followed suit, her sudden movements making him wary. “After you,” he said, ushering her toward the door. “Careful of the gaps. I really did start repairs, see.” He followed her out, keeping a distance between them, curious how she’d have regrouped during the pause. When she said nothing, he went for it.

“One thing I do believe is you got a week. Oh, not from your boss at work. From whoever you’re in hock to, seeing as you lost the goods you smuggled over from London, with the costume jewellery. As in, you got a week to get them back. You know, I can’t even imagine how valuable the diamonds must be.” He held up the trinket to the light, letting the sun make it sparkle. “But that Brit businessman Rosenberg knows. Down to the last half-penny, I bet. And he’s offering a pretty penny reward for his stolen property. Robbed in his Rolls Royce?”

Judy sank onto the couch, almost missing it. “ _Fuck,_ ” she breathed, her face as white and pinched-looking as it had been when he’d spied on her outside her apartment. She raised her chin to stare at Mike, the hard mask back again. “Anything else you want to comment on?”

“That you’re a quick study. Oh, and a good improvisor.” His eyes still on her, Mike plucked the _Tempo_ from the floor and skimmed it across to her, taking the chair opposite her as he did so. She batted the magazine away. “You got all the details from that basketball player’s call-up dead on, and used ’em for an imaginary conscripted boyfriend you conjured up to get sympathy. I’m not that clear on why you had to go that route?” Although he was damn glad about it. “Couldn’t bring yourself to seduce Pete when you already have a guy? Or Peter wasn’t interested in fucking you?”

He’d hoped to shatter her composure, he realized, when it didn’t work.

“Both, yeah.”

“And I know you don’t like to get your hands dirty. Having to meet with creeps to pass on stolen goods? No. You’d rather facilitate their retrieval, or some ten-cent expression like that, at a huge party where a hundred strangers were milling around but you weren’t, making it nice and easy with no blowback on you. Bet you did the same to receive the goods, right? Something like left a trunk full of stuff out for the thief to drop his contribution into?”

“Mike.” Judy swallowed. “Please…I’ve been stupid. More than. I got in above my head in stuff. With…people. Awful people. It wasn’t my fault, or my idea, but—”

“Yeah, I’m not so interested in the details. Like, was it you or your fellah who was more dissatisfied with things, got into crime? Or if your part was the actual stealing to order for a buyer or just the carrying of stolen goods. If it was to pay for your apartment in that sweet little complex, or finance his agency—if that’s not just a front—or set you up with your own business, where you’re your own boss? None o’that matters. Not to me.”

Suddenly something else clicked and he understood that thing Micky had said, about one of Judy’s ‘friends’ knowing they were a group and being invited to hear them: most likely by Lorri, who she also most likely worked with at the extras agency. Goddammit, Judy had hired herself a group of ‘friends’ as bait for the other three Monkees.

“You really did need us out of the house,” he mused. “To find the cufflink…” He left the sentence open so she’d have to do the work.

“And the watch.”

He huffed out a laugh. “I sure hope that false casing around the smaller watch inside the fake one is waterproof! Or I guess whoever the buyer of the diamonds is could just pick ’em all out and make ’em into something else, right? Well, you’re shit out of luck. As you probably guessed when you couldn’t find it, the watch ain’t here.”

“How much?”

“Excuse me?” But then the meaning of her snapped-out question sank in. “Jesus! This ain’t no shakedown! Not everyone is as amoral as you.”

“Well, excuse me,” she snarked.

Before life had hardened her so much, she might have been okay, Mike found himself musing. Fun, even. She was quick, smart, fearless … Mike betted Peter had seen glimmers and gleams of her deep-buried soul and tried his best to bring it into the light, get it to shine. Well, he was at least a week late and several thousand dollars short.

“The pocket watch got loaned to a friend. I’m expecting a call about it.” And thankfully, as he said that, the phone rang. _Right on time._ Keeping Judy in his sight, Mike answered it. “Hi there, babe. Thanks for calling me back.”

It took him a few minutes to get his neighbour to understand what he was talking about. Judy sat on the edge of her seat, her hand over her mouth when Nyles went to fetch the item and assure Mike he was holding it up to the phone.

“Where is he?” she whispered.

Mike slanted a raised-eyebrow look at her. _“Really?”_ he mouthed at her. “So, yeah, it was given to us by mistake and they need it back right away. Like, today. So here’s what you gotta do. Make a note, then I’ll ask you to read it back to me. Get the watch couriered to Cosmos Studios, here in LA.”

He recited the address. “To the Costumes Department, to be given personally to Miss Judy FitzSimmons. No one else. She’ll provide ID for the messenger, who has to be the same guy, all the way from you handing it over to him handing it to her. You dig? She’ll sign for it, and the guy has to keep the original of this signed record in his office safe and deliver a duplicate copy to me. Yeah.” He spelled Judy’s name, hoping each letter sank into her like a brand. He waited for Nyles to read it all back, and arranged a time to check in with his neighbour later, to see it had been done.

Mike was petty enough to relish the look on Judy’s face as he put the phone down, and cruel enough to want to make it worse. “Here,” he said, and threw her the cufflink.

Judy fumbled it in her surprise, almost dropping it.

“Guess you’d better make a sudden recovery from your illness and get back to work.” Mike gestured to the front door.

“You…you really don’t give a damn, do you?” Her amazement had her stumbling when she stood.  

“About a lump of carbon? Hardly,” Mike scorned.

“Or aiding and abetting? Or the poor victim? Fine upright citizen you are.” Her tone held just as much, if not more, scorn as she opened the door.

“Do I look like I care about the straight and narrow? Or a guy I don’t even know, one who’ll make more from the insurance and publicity than the goods? No. About Peter, yes.” Mike took pleasure in Judy freezing at his proximity. She probably hadn’t realized he’d followed her and now stood close.

“Which is why I’m angry you used him as your patsy. Turn around. Face me.” He knew she would. “No, not angry. Fucking furious.” He bent down, getting his face close to hers, white heat lacing his words. “Setting him up as your mark to carry the stolen goods? What if something had gone wrong, retrieving them? And lying, and deceiving him—” He could hardly get his words out and had to take a deep breath, hating that cool look she wore.

“Do you have any feelings at all? Oh, not for Pete,” Mike clarified. “Normal human feelings? Is that too complicated a question? I’ll break it down. You fixed on him as a pawn the second you saw him. Right? Just nod.”

She did.

“Because…he’s trusting?”

“ _I see._ ” The curl to her lips and the gleam in her eyes were knowing. “Yeah, he’s naïve. Simple, perhaps. Bit slow, you could say? Or is dumb the word?”

Mike felt each adjective like a dagger to the side. “He’s more decent than you’ll ever be,” he spat.

“I don’t dispute the fact.”

And the acid queen turned to leave, which was when Mike reached over her shoulder and shoved the door closed with the flat of his hand. “What I’m most mad about is your Plan B. Your insurance policy.”

Judy had no choice but to turn, trapped between the closed door and him.

“What?”

“Peter.” Mike stood toe to toe with her. “That’s the reason you helped yourself to a photo of him, right? What did you think, he was holding out on you? Had the goods stashed? And if he wouldn’t talk to you, he’d sing like a canary when the coupla goons you passed his picture on to picked him up? Answer me!” he ordered, making her jump and thump into the door at her back. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Or if any other one of you had the stuff, snatching him would make whoever it was give it up, yes. Or _you’d_ make them, if he was threatened. I could see that.”

Her eyes glinted the coldest ice-blue he’d ever seen. Mike didn’t trust himself to speak. His heartbeat thundered in his ears and his shaking hands balled into fists he brought up to thud into the wood of the door and cage Judy in while he let her see the anger and menace he held in and would let loose.

“And now?” Judy enquired.

“Now…” He cleared his throat to speak. This was the part he was dreading. It was true what he’d told her—he didn’t give a rat’s ass about diamond accessories or being an accessory to a crime. “Now you’re planning to just vanish from Peter’s life? Not even contact him again? Not answer his phone calls, when he calls, worried about you?” Because that would hurt him just as much, if not more, than if he ever knew he’d been callously used and endangered by a selfish, lying, greedy—

She tilted her head to one side. “What do you want me to do, Michael?”

“Lie to him.” _More._ He wouldn’t let Peter be hurt in any way. “I want you to tell him your boyfriend asked you to marry him and you said yes. That everything’s great with you now and so thanks and goodbye. Got it?”

Judy didn’t meet his eyes, directing her gaze over his head. “Wait. You’re basically forcing me to tell Peter that I can’t see him anymore because my boyfriend proposed and I accepted? Even though we both know that’s a lie?”

“Yes.”

“You’re ordering me to lie to Peter as a cover—”

“Yes! Fuck’s sake, what’s so difficult to understand about that?”

Too late he heard the squeak of a footstep behind him.

“ _Michael?_ ”

Mike’s heart leapt into his throat. _No. No no no._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter Tork  
> February 13 1942 – February 21 2019.
> 
> Sem palavras.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

“Michael?” Peter said again, his voice slower, uncertain, in a way Mike hated hearing and hated more that he’d put that doubt and shadow there when he loved hearing Peter’s voice ring with joy and shine bright as the sun.

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the triumphant gleam in Judy’s. Savage fury coursed through him at having believed he’d caught her, defanged and declawed her, only for the little animal just grow them right back again—and use them to strike. He made himself face Peter.

“You…” Peter went to point, then dropped his hand. Mike understood, that and the frown crossing Peter’s forehead at seeing Mike changed from the outfit he’d persuaded them all into. Yeah, what they were wearing was not really the focus, at the moment. But, Jesus, that Peter was still in the stupid striped shorts with suspenders made this worse, somehow.

“Pete!” Judy leapt into the breach when Mike remained speechless. “You weren’t meant to— What did you hear?” She stepped forward to stand at Mike’s side, hand over her mouth.

“I heard…Michael urging you to lie to me about why you couldn’t see me again? I heard, but I don’t—”

“Understand?” Oh, that sad head shake she gave almost convinced Mike. “That’s because he didn’t finish what he was saying. The reason why he wants me to lie to you. Mike?” Judy actually touched him, digging sharp nails into his bare arm. “I think you have to tell Pete. He should know. He has a right to.”

He couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to, the way his breath caught and jammed in his throat. Funny, in laying this all out to himself all yesterday and today, in all his strategizing and plotting it through, Mike had reasoned that the bad choice he’d have to make would be between letting criminals get away with a serious crime, and hurting Peter. And that was in fact a fucking easy choice, for him, because Peter came first. Now, always and forever. Or at least, Mike hoped. Even if they were never more than friends, he’d protect Peter’s right to his sweet and joyous soul to the end, no matter who he had to traffic with to do so.

Judy sank the tips of her nails in deeper. “Mike—”

“No.” _To everything._ He tore his arm free, thinking furiously, but unable to see a way through. However this played out, a gentle, caring soul would be stained as a result. “ _You_ should. I think you’d explain it better than me. Right?” He tried to throw a warning into the hip and shoulder that bumped hers, with the rest of him scrabbling for answers how to salve the wound Peter would receive.

“You…” Peter looked from Mike to Judy. “One of you should.”

Mike didn’t think that was what Peter had been going to say.

“I’m sorry, Pete. It’s just that Mike…wants me gone because—”

He had a moment’s warning, in the huge breath she gulped in and the flash in her eyes. A moment in which he could do nothing, just stare mutely at Peter.

“Because he, well, wants me too and can’t deal with seeing me with you.” The breath she’d heaved in came out in a rush, the words tumbling with it. They took a second to register, and then they hit. _Hard._ “Oh, he could never cut you out or ask me to choose, of course,” Judy rushed on, when Peter went to speak. “So making me tell you a lie and split is easier. But please don’t think he did it solely for himself, to make things easier for himself, I mean. He’s thinking of you, I’m sure.”

She did the wide-eyed blink for Peter, one she must have done a lot over the course of their encounters, this past week, but the look she shot Mike from the corner of her eye was that of a cardsharp who’d thrown down an ace and was preparing to rake in her winnings.

“No!” Mike hadn’t appreciated how diabolical the woman was. He’d known she was quick at improvising, adapting, but that she could add to this? Twisting the hurt and pain into not two, but three layers? Two lies and a truth—one lie down, one to go and the truth to come. And all of them set to flay Peter. And whatever Mike said now, it would look like he was lying.

Because Peter knew Mike didn’t have the same hug-the-whole-world approach to life he had. Even the other day he’d referred to Mike’s cynicism, his guardedness with people, with life. Mike put up walls where Peter sought to tear them down, to live with no barriers. But still, Mike had to try. “Peter. Listen. It’s—”

“No.”

Mike’s vision went black at the edges at Peter’s denial and at him moving to reach for Judy’s hand and hold it in his.  He wanted to knock her filthy flesh from Peter’s, wipe Peter’s clean.

“No, Judy. If I gave you the impression I was anything more than as a friend to you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to and I can’t ever be any more than that.” The look he gave to Mike, from eyes that were laser sharp, with no haze or softness in them now, blistered.

It took Mike mere seconds to connect that with Judy’s smirk. “No!” he found his voice saying. Oh, Jesus, no! Peter was leaving the field clear for Mike and making sure everyone knew it!

“But, Judy, I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood Michael too. I don’t think he thinks of you that way, either, and I know he wouldn’t do what he’s doing for the reason you said,” Peter continued, still clasping Judy’s hand, but his firm, unwavering gaze on Mike. “I know him, you see, right to the heart of him.”

 _Peter!_ Mike fought the drenching wave of relief he wanted to soak in. This wasn’t over, not by a long way. But Peter… Always catching him out. Wrongfooting him, leaving him stumbling in uncharted territory. And he, who’d always needed to know where each step led…was getting to not mind that. To enjoy it, even. And to be _soooo_ glad of it right now.

“You’ve got things wrong, Judy,” Peter insisted, his smile a little crooked. “Do you want to talk about it? See if we can—”

“No.” Her denial came fast and she pulled free. “I…I think— I’d better go.”

And try as he might, Mike couldn’t work out how much of her confusion was faked there. “Yeah, you were just saying you really should to get into work, right? Some big last-minute thing come up and you really have to handle it personally?”

She nodded, probably not even realizing one hand patted the pocket in which she’d stashed the goods all this had been about. “I… Yes. So this is goodbye.”

She leaned forward, and Mike clenched his fists, because if she kissed Peter farewell, he’d— But she needed the space to open the door, her hand fumbling behind her, before she pivoted around and was gone. Just like that, from one second to the next. Mike flinched when Peter moved, stretching his hand out to close the door and lock it. He faced Mike.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Tell you what?”

Peter’s look warned Mike not to stall. “The truth.”

“The truth?” He thought fast. “Is that I was looking out for you.”

“How, Michael?”

“ _Mike!_ Everyone calls me Mike!” Mike exploded.

“I’m…not everyone.” Peter shook his bangs from his eyes to stare. “What happened? You thought I was hung up on her and she could never like me in that way? You were trying to get her to let me down easily and she misunderstood your motives? Michael—say something!”

He had a split second to decide. “All I can say is I was thinking of you.”

“I…” Peter walked a pace and turned back. The narrow-eyed, speculative look he wore confused Mike. He’d expected not anger—this was Pete, after all—but _resentment_ , perhaps. At the least annoyance that Mike had stuck his nose in. But that almosy _waiting, considering_ look… “I appreciate that you were doing what you thought was best,” he finally said, and the ambiguity stung.

“We should get back,” Peter continued, when Mike went to speak, to seek answers. “The competition? Your heat’s on about now. I came to fetch you.”

“ _Surfing?_ Now?” Mike couldn’t help but be credulous.

“Always.” And that dimple, that smile, that light… Mike would endure anything for it.

“Fine.” He gestured for Peter to lead the way, and not just to see his ass and thighs in those tight shorts.

Peter had only taken a few steps before he swung around. “We’ll talk about this later,” he murmured, and again his ambiguous words were like picking a chord, making it vibrate. And when Peter plucked Mike’s baggy T-shirt from him, to reveal his identical-to-Peter’s outfit, Mike couldn’t stop the shiver that trembled through him. “Shorts?” As if hypnotized, Mike slid his board shorts off, to leave him in the same striped ones Peter wore.

Confused, Mike followed Peter’s darting figure back to the sand and sea and crowds and all-abilities contest. He couldn’t focus when he tried to study the waves, and reaction to the morning’s events set in when it was his group’s turn to paddle out. Mike, far from an expert, positioned himself where the others did and tried to catch the wave right, crouching, wobbling and standing on his longboard and stumbling off ungracefully near the shore. He missed his second wave and came off in the white water on his third attempt, grateful each heat was short, though the fifteen minutes felt like eternity.

“Thought you’d been practicing!” Davy, reaching him, stuck out a hand to help him up.

“Like you were much better, with that attempt at a kick flip that kicked you in the flip!” Micky scolded Davy. Oh, Davy was so competitive. That would hurt. “It’s okay.” Micky ran down to grab Mike’s board. “I did some acrobatics so we got a few points in hand.”

“Yeah?” Mike spat out seawater and shook his hair from his eyes. “Walked the board?” He liked seeing Micky heel-toe the length of his board from back to prow.

“The radio guys interviewed me after.”

“How’d it go?”

“I talked about the group.” Micky indicated the journalist standing in the open back of his beach buggy.

“And I got her phone number.” Davy waved at the female assistant next to the man.

Mike didn’t think the reporter would be zooming up in his beach car to interview him, after that performance. They cleared the area for the next four competitors. “Peter,” Mike said as Pete passed him.

“Shh. He’s in the zone!” Micky cautioned. “Hey, someone’s missing. Where’s Judy?”

“Gone,” Mike answered, his gaze following Peter.

“Gone?” Micky echoed. “As in, for good?”

 _For good, better and best_. Mike thought of his insurance policy, linking Judy to the crime, and wondered if it would hold. He might have to take out an extra…clause. In nodding to Micky, Mike caught the look on Davy’s face. It was complex and something he knew he should check out, should understand. But not now, when Peter was competing.

Mike took the binoculars to watch. Peter in the water was a treat, the way he centered himself on his board and got into place, here a few yards away from the other three in his heat. Peter paddled, all strong arm movements, to match the speed of the water coming up on him, glided the last few seconds, arched his back and popped up. It looked, _God_ , _arousing_. Pretty soon even Peter sitting reading a book would give Mike wood, he thought.

And yeah, Pete caught an unbroken wave. The other surfers with him were all good, a high standard, but Peter rode it smoothly and easily, zigzagging from side to side, skimming along, and rising and landing on his board all the way to the shore in one steady flow.

“Lotta points there.” Micky jumped up to see over the crowd and squint at the judges, as if that would tell him anything.

Peter let the next wave go and caught the one after, although Mike could see no difference between them. Although…was this wave rougher? Higher? Faster? He was about to ask Mick, and if Peter was swinging more from one side to the other when Peter turned back into the wave, snaking from its bottom to its top, twisting over to ride it down again, then back up to the crest, to turn and ease down once more, to ooohs and cheers from the spectators.

After a third up-and-down, he lost his footing and wiped out, tumbling and bobbing in the water, and Mike, not knowing he’d moved, tore to the water’s edge and was wading in to meet Peter when he walked out with his board. Peter held up a rueful hand when the crowd still cheered him. Mike pulled him free of the water and to the drier sand, pushing him down to sit. He held a towel, although he didn’t remember snatching one up, and handed it to Peter, although he’d rather have mopped his face and swiped at his wet hair for him.

“Thanks.” Peter emerged from behind the towel and high-fived two of the guys from his round of the contest who were striding from the waves to be hugged and clapped on the back by their groups.

“You okay?” Mike dropped to kneel beside Peter.

“Of course.” Peter rubbed his hair back from his forehead., then lowered the towel. “Mike, you have to stop… I mean, you can’t keep… Look, sooner or later everybody tumps over, you know?”

The southern expression, in Peter’s northern accent, should have had Mike laughing, but instead he stared at Peter, trying to understand the layers to the statement. _You’ve got to let them fly the nest some time,_ Peter had said recently.

“Yes.” Peter seemed to catch the thought. “Which might mean falling and crash-landing. In which case, we get our lumps. Literally, in Micky’s case.”

“That wasn’t what I d—” Mike regrouped. “And I told you I don’t see you the same way I do the others.” And in regrouping, said too much.

“And I asked you how you did see me.”

“I…know you did.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“I know that too.” He refused to blink, to lose the staring contest they’d gotten into.

“Grrr!” Peter threw the scrunched-up towel at him. “You are the most stubborn, maddening—”

“I…” Mike could hardly speak for laughing. “…think exactly the same about you, babe!” He cherished the smile lighting up Peter’s eyes, making them shine a bright topaz. He wished he knew the emotions behind them, the groove Peter was vibing to…but had a feeling he would, soon.

“ _Guys!_ ” yelled a familiar voice, and Mike was torn between relief at the respite from something momentous that he didn’t think he was ready for, and rolling his eyes at Micky’s bad timing.

 


	20. Chapter Twenty

“Fuck’s sake, Mick!” Mike pulled himself from the warm glow wrapping around him and sprang to shield Peter as the vehicle braked right in front of them, sending a spray of sand over them. He glared from Micky, in the driver’s seat, to Davy, his passenger next to him. “Where the hell d’you get the beach buggy?”

“Details! You’re always about the details, Mikey. Never mind that. I had to come and get you for the contest—oh and hey, we got through to the next stage!” Micky pointed back to the judges.

“ _What?_ ”

“The FAB LA Radio Summer Surf competition. Next heat’s Zuma Beach, next week. But no time for that now. Get in. The sculpture contest’s starting,” Micky urged, casting a look behind him at where a cry was starting up.

“And?” Mike nevertheless swung himself into the buggy.

“Davy wants to take part.”

“Really?” Mike shot Davy a look.

“Oh, man, wait until you see the organizers!” Davy’s whistle and figure-of-eight air drawing made his motivation clear. “Micky managed to get me in.”

“Micky?” Peter sounded as surprised as Mike felt at Micky’s act of generosity and caring. He vaulted in, his board under one arm.

“Hey, you gotta do whatever it takes when there’s a chick in leopard skin swimwear involved, Petey. Even if it’s just a one-piece, not a bikini.” Micky wrenched the buggy into a tight donut to go back the way he’d come, glancing over his shoulder at the shouts and fist-waving of a small crowd in his wake. “It’s like a law or bylaw or something, here in LA.”

It would be, to Micky, Mike supposed, and one of the few he respected. He grabbed for the side of the vehicle when it lurched, his hand landing almost on top of Peter’s. “And managing to enter this competition…would that have anything to do with you being dressed as a sailor?” Mike waved a hand at Micky’s back, resplendent in its white uniform.

“What?” Davy said, as if he’d just noticed. The double-take he gave Mick was comical. Well, he tended to be self-absorbed…

“Yeah, about that…” Micky’s very sharp turn and violent brake behind the dunes toppled Mike from his feet, knocking him right over and into Peter’s lap. Not that Mike minded. “Could you put these on?” Micky continued. Ramming a schoolboy cap onto Davy’s head with one hand, he passed over a pile of clothes into the back with the other.

“Neither of us is wearing a dress, man!” yelped Mike, shaking out the items.

“Especially not a minidress,” Peter agreed. He held up a suit and a fake mustache. “I’ll take these and Mike can have these.” He handed Mike a letterman’s sweater and white peg pants. “Because Mike’s downgrading from the role of _paterfamilias_ to that of big brother. Which is something we’re talking about later.”

“Yeah, just as soon as I can grab a dictionary and find out what the hell that is,” Mike muttered. Wondering again at the clamor coming from behind them, he shrugged his way into the clothes, and they were off.

Both his belated query of “Hey, sculpting what?” and Davy’s, “Hang on, how _did_ you manage to enrol me in the competition?” were soon answered when they got there minutes later, and Mike’s legs couldn’t hold him up, reducing him to rolling on the sand, where he laughed until he cried.

“S-s-s-sandcastle building contest!” he eventually spluttered.

“For kids and their families, which Davy actually qualifies for!” Peter guffawed next to him, almost losing his stick-on facial hair.

“Him age-wise, no disguise or subterfuge needed, and with us providing the family part!” Micky, stretched out on Mike’s other side, drummed his heels into the sand with mirth and had to stuff his Dixie Cup sailor hat in his mouth to hold in the explosion.

“You two don’t pack that in, I’ll sort you out when I’ve dealt with _him_ ,” Davy promised, loosing a dark glare at Micky for simultaneously having helped him get closer to the glamor models running the contest, quashed his chances with said glamor models _and_ advanced his own prospects with them. He turned the glower into a sickly smile for the hostess who came to ask him what jungle animal he’d be making, as the rules decreed, with the sponsors being Tropical Sun, a new sun lotion for kiddies.

“Monkee,” Micky answered before Davy could.

“Four Monkees,” Mike amended, knowing the foursome’s competitive streak and how things would go.

The smug satisfaction on Davy’s face when a pair of leopard-skin and tiger-stripe swimsuit-wearing chicks complete with pointy animal ears on their heads and furry animal tails on their asses rubbed sun cream into him to promote safe sunbathing proclaimed _he_ had the last laugh. If his sand creation didn’t win a prize, he should win a medal for managing to sculpt with such a huge hard-on, Mike thought.

“I think a lot of prepubescent boys must be getting their sexual awakening today,” Peter murmured, jumping onto Mike’s train of thought and pointing down the line of pint-sized male competitors who looked simultaneously scared yet aroused by the sexy feline beauties bending low over them.

“And developing a life-long fetish for chicks in big-cat-print scanties.”

“You think?” Peter squinted up at Mike.

“Oh yeah. It’s an LA hazard. I mean, what do you think happened to Micky?” Mike countered, and they snorted with laughter again.

“Hey, isn’t that Eddy?” Micky waved at a guy a few people down. “I’ll go say hi.”

“I didn’t know he had a kid brother,” Davy commented.

“He…doesn’t.” Micky came back, making a face. “That’s…his son. Seems…it’s complicated?”

“Ah.” Mike thought of their neighbor. “Does Toby know?”

“She probably did and forgot,” Davy suggested.

Mike was inclined to agree. She was as self-absorbed as Davy and very absent-minded with it.

“Hey, neat!” Peter admired Mike’s sculpture. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Mike shrugged.

“They have artists at the skills exchange. One’s a potter. You should come, see if you like it,” Peter continued.

“Yeah? And what skills could I offer in exchange? You’re the musician there.” _And better than me, anyhow._

“Umm, management.” Peter nodded.

“What?”

“Yeah, like life management. Organizing. How to draw up plans, see them realized. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, _sure_. Peter, we can barely afford to pay bills and eat, most months!”

“But we do. Every month. And we haven’t starved yet.” Peter regarded him. “Here. Hands?” He held his out, palms up, on top of Mike’s and drew them apart, for the sand they held to fall into Mike’s cupped palms.

It took Mike a second to remember the group bonding exercise Davy had shown them the first time they’d come to the beach together as a foursome. It was adapted from his theater days, and designed to get a new cast used to proximity and touching one another. Davy and Micky were busy bickering, so Mike moved his hands on top of Peter’s, returning the sand to him, and Peter did the same to him after, then Mike to him again, until so much trickled away there was no more to pass. Then it was just them, sitting close, their cross-legged knees touching and their hands resting together, warm and solid, and…waiting.

“Oh, you made a miniature!” cooed jaguar-woman, patting Micky’s shoulder and pointing to his statue.

“What miniature? It’s to scale!” Micky looked from his small sculpture to its original, the Mancunian who’d served as his model. “Down to the tiniest detail.” He pointed to the part of his effigy he referred to, making the jaguar-print lovely blush and Davy pretend to trip as an excuse to throw a bucket of water over Micky.

“Sorry,” he said. “Still, you must be used to salt water, at sea, right, you being a real sailor and not an imposter, which is probably against the law?”

“I…think they’re even,” Peter said, watching the wildcat hostesses pat an almost swooning Micky dry. “If anyone’s keeping score.”

Micky was soon back. “Hey, who’s cooking later?” he asked.

“Erm, me.” Mike worked it out. “Why?”

“Oh, I need to know there’s enough for one extra.” Micky gestured to the models, preening himself. “The lovely Sandra there has accepted my invite to come back to the pad for a bite.”

“To eat?” Mike enquired.

“If I’m lucky.” Micky made a purring noise.

“Which one is she?” Peter squinted at the glamor felines.

“The cheetah.”

“Spelled with double E or E A? It's good to get that clear from the start,” Peter observed, making Mike laugh.

They didn’t win any prizes, hardly surprising given the nature of Micky and Davy’s sculptures, but Davy did get a big enough bottle of sun cream to last them all summer, meaning the afternoon was judged a success, on their terms.

* * * *

 

Later, when Mike was cooking up a storm on the grill, Davy came out of the sundeck door to bring him a beer. Being Davy, he didn’t offer to help, just watched. Then he laughed.

“You’re so slick. A real smooth operator. You ran that bird off and kept her bloody groceries!”

“Yeah? If I were that slick, I’d have gotten her to cook ’em first.” But Mike grinned.

“I was wrong.”

“What?” Mike had to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth from almost spitting out his drink in astonishment.

“You’re getting it together.” Davy clinked his bottle against Mike’s.

“Thanks?” He was a little lost.

“I was thinking about it, ’cause that FAB what’s it station bloke asked us to describe our team, when they interviewed us?”

“Uh-huh?”

“So, I said, Micky’s acrobatic, I’m athletic, Peter’s sporty and you…always do your best and give it everything you can. You know?”

Mike listened to what was meant, not just what was being said. He moved closer to Davy and draped an arm over his shoulders, in the way Davy didn’t usually let the other three guys do, because it emphasised their height difference. After a second, Davy curled an arm around Mike’s waist and squeezed. He chinked bottles again and freed himself.

“And you’re still not in jail.”

Mike got it. No shovels, no shallow graves involved. “Hey, I didn’t run Judy off. She left!” he called after Davy’s departing back.

“Oh, Judy left you? Well, you weren’t really suited, you know? You can do better.” Toby, bags of chips in one hand, something oozing in a paper bag in the other, and hooking a large watermelon under one arm, reached the top of the beach steps.

Mike stood back for her to add her burgers to the grill. The aroma must have lured her along the sand to their pad. At least she had a contribution. If Toby pushed her way in at mealtimes, it was because she couldn’t be bothered to cook even the convenience food she lived on, and brought it to them. When they showed up at hers of an evening, it was because they had no food.

“I wasn’t seeing Judy,” he tried.

“She was a little…  What do you call someone who comes to your house and goes through your closet?”

“ _Judy,_ ” Mike answered, adding the bell peppers he’d gotten for Peter.

“Did she do that to you? Sort your clothes into three piles: things you should not be seen dead in; things you can wear in dim lighting and things that would be okay if they were the right size?” Toby shook her head and took Mike’s drink from him to sip.

“Kind of, yeah.” Mike took the bottle back.

“Wait. She split up with you, meaning it ended badly—is that why she’s not answering my calls?” Toby frowned and poked Mike in the chest. “Oh, you guys! Can’t you finish any relationship well?”

“At least we finish ’em,” Mike murmured, giving her and the back of Davy, visible through the bandstand windows, a pointed look.

“But my _feature_!” Toby wailed.

“Toby, Toby, Toby.” Mike turned the chops. “ _Behind_ the spotlight? That’s a little tame for _Bride_ magazine, don’t you think?” Or whatever it was called. “More women _in_ the spotlight will let you show off your contacts more, show them what you’ve got. Like…Princess Wendy of Peruvia. Or Irene from _Irene!_ You know, that new comedienne and singing sensation with her own show?”

“ _Oooh!_ ” Toby scrabbled for a pen. “But I need another favor.” She went to help herself to a half-cooked mushroom and Mike rapped her fingers with the tongs. “I told you about the woman coming to stay? The one I’ve never met? Well, we’ve talked on the phone and exchanged letters, but…”

Mike barely listened to her ramble about some chick coming over from London for a secondment to _Minx_ , the mag Toby sold most of her stuff to and where she’d got a few part-time staff hours and was hoping for more, hence her Good Samaritan act in offering to house this visitor and… 

“Yeah, sure,” he said when it seemed she’d stopped, and her hugging him and kissing him on his cheek in thanks startled him. What had he promised? They’d back Toby up, give her strength in numbers when she had to entertain this hoity-toity English madam? Whatever.

“And it’ll take your mind off Judy finishing with you,” came Toby’s parting shot as she vanished inside, stuffing chips in her mouth as she went.

Peter squeezed past Toby and grinned on seeing Mike. “Here.” He offered him a napkin. “You’ve got lipstick…” He indicated Mike’s face.

“Thanks.” Mike wiped himself. “Turning into Micky.”

“Hope not. One’s enough and you’re fine as you are.”

_Oh._ Mike bent low, all his attention on the steak.

“Michael?”

He was forced to look up, look at Peter. Not that it was an unpleasant task, especially with the starting-to-set sun catching his hair and eyes like that. Mike loved being out on the sand or the deck with Peter of an evening. Or, hell, of a morning. Or anytime. Anywhere— Peter stepped close, taking all Mike’s attention.

“That question I asked you, that you didn’t answer.”

“Uh-huh?” came Mike’s lame attempt to buy time.

“Will you answer it?”

And which didn’t stall Peter for a second.

_Will I…_ “Pete…”

Mike thought over everything he’d learned from his bandmates. His recent understanding that his self-imposed protector-provider role within their group wasn’t fixed, wasn’t immutable, and didn’t preclude him from having other…possibilities, for one. His newly acknowledged feelings for Peter, for another. His increasing openness of heart, for a third. All of this was so new, needing time to absorb, never mind act on, and then only if he was brave enough.

“You are,” Peter murmured, so quietly Mike could have imagined it.

When Mike’s answer came, it came straight from his heart, and couched in the vernacular of his youth.

“I…might will.”

The soft light in Peter’s eyes, changing the brown to gold, made Mike’s heart swell. And the smile blossoming on Peter’s face made Mike beam in turn, because it mirrored his own feelings, blooming and growing, stretching out into the future.

“I’m fixin’ to,” Mike added, bringing that future nearer, so near he could almost touch it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it!  
> Would really appreciate any feedback on how it hung together as a whole and if anyone's interested in reading more.  
> Thanks!


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